Quotes & Sayings About Stones

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life. — Sara Paxton

Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman ... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them. — Betty Smith

Remember, when incited to slander, that it is only he among you who is without sin that may cast the first stone. — Hosea Ballou

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools. — Denis Hayes

Question four: What book would you give to every child?
Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads.
That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. — Derrick Jensen

God doesn't promise to remove the stones from the path, but He does promise to make them stepping-stones and not stumbling blocks. He promises to help us climb higher because of the difficulties of life. — Warren W. Wiersbe

Within this work are places where you will see I have done some unforgivably stupid things; here I can say only that I am not perfect. Throw stones if you must, but have a care for your own house! I also offer a part-excuse, part-explanation: I am subject to influences from my most recent meals. I have not edited those parts to make myself seem better than I am; they stand as they were written. — Garon Whited

It's time for new bands to step up because KISS and Mtley Cre, Aerosmith, The [Rolling] Stones ... we're not always gonna be here. Who's gonna replace us? There's no one out there. It's sad. — Nikki Sixx

Yeah, yeah, I've been Beatled, I've been Rolling Stoned. — Sammy Hagar

One of the things that all kids are taught by their parents is this old "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." — William J. Clinton

The Stones, I love the Stones. I watch them whenever I can. Fred, Barney.. — Steven Wright

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

I mean, I feel like you can kill the same bird with both stones. — Greg Behrendt

When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. — Henry David Thoreau

That old man over there
Is selling trinkets made of stones
That old woman the entire world
In a map without any hole! — Avijeet Das

sticks and stones might break your bones, but cement pays homage to tradition. — Estelle Getty

A HEART OF LAPIS

The most beautiful stones adorn my neck
Like an Ancient Egyptian collar.
Two glistening balls of onyx sit on top
Followed by a double stretch of coral.
At the center is a lapis heart,
Deeper in color than the Red Sea waters
And I am so grateful for this heavenly gift
This precious necklace is
My daughter. — Suzy Kassem

My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me. — Patti Smith

Something I've learned from people like U2, the Stones and Lenny Kravitz is that the grind of live shows is so necessary [to build your career]. — Alicia Keys

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. — Mircea Eliade

Tis said if under a waxing moon a maid weaves a chain of bluebells within the stone circle, the next lad she sees will be her true love." She held up her handiwork. "Tis no' quite finished, so I believe ye are safe from me... — Willa Blair

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, — Chris Colfer

Those who do not preach life but live it do not smile to the lily near the bank; they look for stones and hang on. — Anthony Marais

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things
are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones
are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the
greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of
snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and
the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but
something very different — Bertrand Russell

The light was leaving in the west it was blue The children's laughter sang and skipping just like the stones they threw the voices echoed across the way its getting late It was just another night with the sun set and the moon rise not so far behind to give us just enough light to lay down underneath the stars listen to papas translations of the stories across the sky we drew our own constellations — Jack Johnson

MYSTERIES, YES
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads. — Mary Oliver

Attempt to influence public opinion by means of newspapers, radio, television, and advertising are based on two factors. On the one hand, they rely on sampling techniques that reveal the trend of "opinion" or "wants"-that is, of collective attitudes. On the other, they express the prejudices, projections, and unconscious complexes (mainly the power complex) of those who manipulate public opinion. But statistics do no justice to the individual. Although the average size of stones in a heap may be five centimeters, one will find very few stones of exactly this size in the heap. — C. G. Jung

Magic, indeed, is all around us, in stones, flowers, stars, the dawn wind and the sunset cloud; all we need is the ability to see and understand. — Doreen Valiente

Sometimes, when people think they're putting obstacles in your path, they're actually laying your stepping-stones. You just gotta recognize them as one and the same. — Daniel Black

This, I told myself, this is the way I shall be condemned to pass my days, turning over words, stray lines, fragments of memory, to see what might be lurking underneath them, as if they were so many flat stones, while I steadily faded. — John Banville

So by the time the 60s rolled in that became a huge art form in its own right with bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Hendrix doing total concept albums, same thing with Pink Floyd. — DJ Spooky

So," Celaena said, spitting blood onto the stones, "do you want to explain yourself first, or should I? — Sarah J. Maas

For many people it is depressing even to move house. A lost fragment of life always remains. To move to another town, settle in a foreign country, is for everyone a major decision. But, to be suddenly driven forth, within twenty-four hours, from one's home, one's work, the reward of years of steady industry. To become a helpless prey of help. To be sent defenceless out to Asiatic highroads, with several thousand miles of dust, stones, and morass before one. To know that one will never again find a decently human habitation, never again sit down to a proper table. Yet this is all nothing. To be more shackled than any convict. To be counted as outside the law, a vagabond, whom anyone has the right to kill unpunished. — Franz Werfel

Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising ... — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering. — William Butler Yeats

But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have a Swiss Army knife if they hit me. — Mark Haddon

She is here, near my heart again!' he cried. 'Oh Lord, I thank Thee for all, for all, for Thy wrath and for Thy mercy! ... And for Thy sun which is shining upon us again after the storm! For all this minute I thank Thee! Oh, we may be insulted and humiliated, but we're together again, and now the proud and haughty who have insulted and humiliated us may triumph! Let them throw stones at us! Have no fear, Natasha ... We will go hand in hand and I will say to them, 'This is my darling, this is my beloved daughter, my innocent daughter whom you have insulted and humiliated, but whom I love and bless for ever and ever! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Answer, if you hear the words under the words- otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones. — Naomi Shihab Nye

It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More's boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, 'Christ help you! — Hilary Mantel

The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. — Henri Poincare

Returning to the Brandt home but I agreed to give a hand. We arrived after lunch and found Lise at work loading a wheelbarrow with the smaller stones from the huge pile beside the shed. The flower bed itself was in the middle of the yard, positioned in a sunny area between deep pools of shade that lay beneath a couple of tall hackberry trees. — William Kent Krueger

And how to stop the rot? How to salvage something from time's passage? How long before the map makers decide to erase this structure completely? Before it becomes a nameless ruin? And then a mere pile of stones? Mossed over. Forgotten. How long before they lift its name from their charts and from our collective memory? The only thing I can do is fill the place with music. — Richard Skelton

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. — Vladimir Nabokov

What the eyes perceive in herbs or stones or trees is not yet a remedy; the eyes see only the dross. — Paracelsus

There's always the dinner rolls," said Will, pointing to a covered basket. "Though I warn you, they're as hard as stones. You could use them to kill black beetles, if any beetles bother you in the middle of the night. — Cassandra Clare

You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams. — Peter S. Beagle

And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don't know yourself? — Francesco Petrarca

Stone tools are fossilized human behavior. — Louis Leakey

I didn't want to stay in the Stones, and be stuck in a position having to play a music I didn't like anymore and that restricted me from doing all the others things I'm interested in because of time. — Bill Wyman

There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species, like a pyramid. The simpler cell organisms, and then the more complicated ones, all the way up to the mammals and birds and so forth. We call it 'developing upward' ... The whole thing depends on every part of it. And we're taking out the stones from the pyramid. — W.S. Merwin

The common where we had walked the previous evening was a deserted tract of land, typical of Surrey, looking as if it might be miles from any habitation, while only a few deciduous trees divided it from country studded with bungalows. Some of the land showed traces of heath fires, charred roots and stones lying about on the blackened ground. Walking there was not at all like being in the country. Agriculture seemed as remote as in a London street. This waste land might have been some walled-in space in the suburbs where business men practised golfstrokes; or the corner of a cinema studio used for shooting wilderness scenes. It had neither memories of the past nor hope for the future. — Anthony Powell

We have a remarkable instance and evidence of the happy and great influence of such a strong rod as has been described to promote the universal prosperity of a people in the history of the reign of Solomon, though many of the people were uneasy under his government, and thought him too rigorous in his administration (see 1 Kings xii. 4). "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon," 1 Kings iv. 25. "And he made silver to be among them as stones for abundance," chap x. 27. — Jonathan Edwards

Sometimes when Anna is talking to Louise she sees words coming out of her mouth like fistfuls of stones. But she doesn't intend to spew stones; it's simply the only way Anna knows how to takl to her mother. — Jessica Anya Blau

Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there. — Oscar Wilde

Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling. — Edward Hoagland

Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent."

Mrs. Allerton said cheerfully: "You'd rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples - just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds."

The young man directed his scowl in her direction. "I think human beings matter more than stones. — Agatha Christie

No way this could be seen as probable or possible, unless you think of a blow between the eyes, a sudden calamity. The stroke of fate that leaves a man a cripple, the wicked joke that turns clear eyes into blind stones. — Alice Munro

All your winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such is the deceitfulness of sin, and the cunning conveyance of that old serpent, that if his head be once entering in, his whole body will easily follow after; and if he make you handsomely to swallow gnats at first, he will make you swallow camels ere all be done. Oh, happy they who dash the little ones of Babylon against the stones (Ps. 137:9)! — George Gillespie

I judge wisely ... as if nothin ever surprise me,
Loungin, between two pillars of ivory.
I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece.
My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak. — Killah Priest

You shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house and if you got a glass jaw, you should watch yo mouth: cause I'll break yo face. — 50 Cent

The Rascals are something else. They're up there with the Beatles, and Stones and Byrds. That level of musicality. They have a real chemistry. It is like magic. — Steven Van Zandt

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men ... They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. — Hermann Hesse

With the groups who asked me to join them - like the Rolling Stones, Spirit, David Bowie, and Blood, Sweat & Tears - I said no right away because I was way too much into my own thing. — Shuggie Otis

There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind. — Hugh Howey

He couldn't believe it!
He knew her intent before she dove for her sgian dubh. But he couldn't react quickly enough. He wasn't about to allow her to arm herself again. He dropped his sword, needing both hands free and lunged for her, only with his body this time. Tackling her, he took her down, her back cushioned by the wealth of leaves, and planted his body on top of hers.
She grew very still then, and he smiled a little at her. "If you had done just as I asked, we wouldna be like this, now would we lassie?"
Sorcha was fuming mad and scared witless as the braw Highlander pressed his body on top of hers. She felt his staff growing against her belly the longer he remained between her legs. He was beautiful, his dark brown eyes swimming with lust, his long brown hair hanging about her face as she looked up at him, panting for breath, trembling, despite wishing to show he didn't frighten her one bit. But he did. — Terry Spear

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers. — Carl Sagan

The rose fell, a brief fragrant blazing meteor before it plummeted to the cold stones, forgotten. — Melinda O'Donnell

Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones. Before — Emily Bronte

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The — Charles Dickens

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts. — Tim Minchin

For months I've been working on creating techniques to reproduce Swarovski crystals in sugar using the real stones to guide me. — Ron Ben-Israel

I am just a little tired of the Stones and the Beatles, and I don't care if I ever hear 'Louie Louie' ever again. — Wolfman Jack

We've decided to wake a miss for you because you are nice. We want a booby as roomful as ours.
Everybody had seen the Hobgoblin laugh, but nobody believed he could smile. He was so happy that you could see it all over him
from his hat to his boots! Without a word he waved his cloak over the grass
and behold! Once more the garden was filled with a pink light and there on the grass before them lay a twin to the King's Ruby
the Queen's Ruby. — Tove Jansson

I've always loved black, and I realized that, from the beginning, man went into completely dark caves to paint. They painted with black too. They could have painted with white because there were white stones all over the ground, but no, they chose to paint with black in the dark. — Pierre Soulages

Mistakes are stepping stones for great achievement. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them. — Jose Marti

You've got the sun, you've got the moon, and you've got the Rolling Stones. — Keith Richards

Mick required far less hand-holding than Michael. Signing the Stones, though, had required a full frontal assault worthy of General Patton, one of my heroes. The final battle exploded at the Ritz Hotel in Paris back in '83. After months of relentless pursuit, I had them. All they had to do was sign when suddenly at 3 A.M. Mick goes mental and calls me a "stupid motherfuckin' record executive." I lose it. I reach for his throat. I have a vision of punching out all ninety-eight pounds of him. I stop myself, envisioning tomorrow's headline - "Yetnikoff Kills Jagger." Jagger relents, signs and from then on it's wine and roses. It was Mick - wily and witty Mick - who later that year plotted with my girlfriend, the one called Boom Boom, to throw me a surprise fiftieth birthday bash where Henny Youngman emceed and Jon Peters, Barbra — Walter Yetnikoff

I came up in a time when Springsteen, the Stones, Dylan, and the Beatles were still dominant. For every magazine cover with a new band, there were five covers with one of those guys. — Beck

The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone. — Michelangelo

I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the tower, the house I built for myself at Bollingen. — Carl Jung

A sematary," I say. "A what?" Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it's short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.
"It's a place for burying dead folk," I say.
Her eyes widen. "A place for doing what?"
"Don't people die in space?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. "But we burn them. We don't put them in holes." She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. "How can this be sanitary? — Patrick Ness

The stone neither speaks nor gives anything. Therefore its service is fruitless and its worship is of no avail. — Kabir

A rugged stone growes smooth from hand to hand. — George Herbert

Whether we electrons, light quanta, benzol molecules, or stones, we shall always come up against these two characteristics, the corpuscular and the undular. — Werner Heisenberg

Star had Comet haltered and out of his corral, his lead rope tied to the top rail of the fence, and she was raking out the manure and small stones with amazing care, so that no square inch of dirt was left ungroomed. She had just led him out and tied him to the rail. She made it look so easy. Was it really so easy? Every time she had been here working, I'd stayed close and watched — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Oblong stones sink
slow and sideways. Shaped
by the weight of waves,
dutifully vibrating nature's
lunar-bound graces,
they wash ashore only for
closed palms to forsake them.
The cheerful will
cherish them, place them
on windowsills, or on graves. — Kristen Henderson

The souls moving along ... are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is visible? — Walt Whitman

Listen, nothing's better than being useful. Tell me how, at the present moment, I can be most of of use. I know it's not for you to decide that, but I'm only asking for your opinion. You tell me, and what you say I swear I'll do! Well, what is the great thought?"
"Well, to turn stones into bread. That's a great thought."
"The greatest? Yes, really, you have suggested quite a new path. Tell me, is it the greatest?"
"It's very great, my dear boy, very great, but it's not the greatest. It's great but secondary, and only great at the present time. Man will be satisfied and forget; he will say: 'I've eaten it and what am I to do now?' The question will remain open for all time. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never. — Walter Savage Landor

Investment that only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power cannot contribute toward egalite and justice
the foundation stones for a sound democracy. — Aung San Suu Kyi

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other's alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that's for everyone to enjoy... — Lo Nathamundi

Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another. — George Herbert

The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula. — Aristotle.

All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant
shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jack-hares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot. — Cormac McCarthy

I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones. — Anne Sexton

O soul, leave behind this world of separation
and come with us to the world of union.
How long will you play in this dusty world
like a child filling his skirt with worthless stones?
Cast away the burdens of the earth
and fly upward toward heaven!
Put away your childish care
and join the royal banquet.
Behold the countless ways this body has entrapped you!
Break its deadly hold.
Rise up, lift your head clear of this delusion. — Rumi

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper "One more time" in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality. — L.R. Knost