Stony Quotes & Sayings

I almost rushed Roth right then and threw my arms around him, but a low growl rumbled from behind me. At first I thought it was Abbot's response, but when I realized it was coming from Zayne, I couldn't move.
Roth tilted his head to the side, watching me as a slow, roguish smile graced his lips. "Are you...seriously growling at me, Stony?"
"I'm about to do a lot more than growl."
He chuckled. "That's not very appreciative. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me:
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God! to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Though, like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Then let the way appear
Steps unto heaven;
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given:
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Then with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I'll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Or if on joyful wing,
Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
Upward I fly:
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee. — Sarah Flower Adams

It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them: - Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, - From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are. — Henry David Thoreau

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case. — Hilary Mantel

The Westeros of Aegon's youth was divided into seven quarrelsome kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these kingdoms were not at war with one another. The vast, cold, stony North was ruled by the Starks of Winterfell. In the deserts of Dorne, the Martell princes held sway. The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of Highgarden. The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon belonged to House Arryn ... but the most belligerent kings of Aegon's time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant. — George R R Martin

Wood, if you stop to think of it, has been man's best friend in the world. It held him in his cradle, went to war as the gunstock in his hand, was the frame of the bed he came to rejoicing, the log upon his hearth when he was cold, and will make him his last long home. It was the murmuring bough above his childhood play, and the roof over the first house he called his own. It is the page he is reading at this moment; it is the forest where he seeks sanctuary from a stony world. — Donald Culross Peattie

The great crowds themselves are meaningless. The thing that counts is what happens in the hearts of the people. The evangelist sows the seed, and much inevitably falls upon stony ground and bears no fruit. But if only a few seeds flourish, the results are manifold. — Billy Graham

Minds like beds always made up (more stony than a shore) unwilling or unable. — William Carlos Williams

Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product. — Victor Shklovsky

The Truth must be told at all costs, no matter how unpopular it may be. The authentic spiritual leader, having freed himself of his own false need to be popular, tells the Truth whether it falls on fertile or stony ground. Such a teacher is the salt of the earth, though few know it. If you think the world is delirious as is, you would find it intolerable without his healing influence. — Vernon Howard

The hill was a stony island in a sea of green. — George R R Martin

One of the rudest questions you might hear from an American is "What do you do for a living?" The only proper response is "Excuse me?" followed by a self-satisfied smirk and a stony silence. Then they assume that you are independently wealthy and grovel shamefully. — Dmitry Orlov

Aegean Islands 1940-41

Where white stares, smokes or breaks,
Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,
Where sea like a wall falls;
Ribbed, lionish coast,
The stony islands which blow into my mind
More often than I imagine my grassy home;

To sun one's bones beside the
Explosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea
(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,
Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,
Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)

To know the gear and skill of sailing,
The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,
Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,
Cry of the bagpipe, treading
Of the peasant dancers;

The dark bread
The island wine and the sweet dishes;
All these were elements in a happiness
More distant now than any date like '40,
A. D. or B. C., ever can express. — Bernard Spencer

For our path in life ... is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them! — Charles Dickens

Such a sky. The widest she'd ever seen. Even more than the long bow of the shoreline and the eternal spread of the sea, it was the sky Betsy could not fold into her understanding, the cliffs and hillocks of the land overturned, sculpted into the stony clouds and softened with the promise of light. — Alison Atlee

As she wrote her pulse quickened to the pleasure of forming the phrases,--her blood warmed to the joy of the working. She was experiencing a return of the familiar sensation of happiness in constructing. Quite suddenly, in fancy she caught in the far distance a glimpse of silver wings. It gave her a warm thrill of gratification too deep for words. Immediately she knew through some inner consciousness, that no matter what the future would hold--joy or sorrow, happiness or grief--that no matter where life's paths would lead her--through sharp and stony ways or beside still waters--buried deep within her was an indestructible capacity to visualize a white bird flying. She might never get close to the way of its winging, but always there would be joy in lifting her eyes to the glory of its distant flight. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

We're - we're going to Paradise now?" said Constant. "I - I'm going to get into Paradise?"
"Don't ask me why, old sport," said Stony, "but somebody up there likes you. — Kurt Vonnegut

I love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Their conversation was checked by the reappearance of Beatrix. "Spot's gone," she reported. "He seemed quite happy to take up residence at Stony Cross Park."
Seeming relieved by her sister's return, Amelia went to her, brushed at the crumbs of soil on her sleeve, and straightened her hair bow. "Good luck to Spot. Are you ready to go back in to supper, dear?"
"No."
"Oh, everything will be fine. Just remember to look chastened while I grimace in an authoritative manner, and I'm certain they'll allow us to stay through dessert. — Lisa Kleypas

I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call. — Ingmar Bergman

Spiritual Love is born of sorrow ... For men love one another with spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground buried beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in their common anguish, and so they pity one another and love one another. — Miguel De Unamuno

As we passed by on the stony causeway, women looked up at us from the fields, their faces furrowed with all known distresses. By their sides, lambs skipped in gaiety and innocence, and goats skipped in gaiety but without innocence, and at their feet the cyclamens shone mauve; the beasts and flowers seemed fortunate because they are not human, as those who have passed within the breath of a plague and have escaped it. — Rebecca West

Faith is not bare knowledge or passive persuasion but the
embrace of Christ by the heart, resulting in personal knowledge of God.
The heart must therefore be prepared by the law awakening the sinner
to his need of Christ. The law beats on the stony heart as a hammer to
smooth its surface before God writes His Word upon it. Though some
men called this repentance, Calvin preferred to think of it as preparation
for faith, which in turn leads to true repentance. — Joel R. Beeke

This is nothing personal, you understand," said Charley to Nobby. "It's just a wossname. Had a wizard in here the other night talking about it. Sort of bendy educational thing, you know?" He appeared to think for a moment. "Learning curve. That was it. It's a learning curve. Detritus, get your big stony arse over here for a moment. — Terry Pratchett

Ramirez walked ahead with a torch he'd fashioned from a stick and some rags and by that queer and reddish light, devils, or the shadows of devils hooked to the shoes of the men and capered across the stony earth. — Laird Barron

The idea that fast reading is good reading is a twentieth-century weed, springing out of the stony farmland cultivated by the computer manufacturers. — Susan Wise Bauer

It seemed such an extraordinary notion - that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: "Sounds neat! Let's do it! — Bill Bryson

No stony bulwark can resist the love, and love dares what anyone can love. — William Shakespeare

Loud footfalls like sarcastic applause sounded in the hallway. Hard shoes with heels. Ceony stepped forward, but Mg. Thane held out his arm, stopping her. All the mirth had vanished from his face. He looked altered - not cheery nor distracted, but stony. Taller, and his coat seemed to bristle about him like a wild cat's fur. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Young horses who cannot bear the whip or spur find life hard. At every smart they start forward and rush to their destruction, and when the way is stony and difficult, they know no better expedient than to overturn the cart and gallop madly away. — Selma Lagerlof

There was money enough ... but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would understand her- no one would pity her- and he, who did both, was powerless to come to her aid. — Edith Wharton

So there was fun and magic in my relationship with Toni, even if the prevailing mood when we trained was stony and severe. — Rafael Nadal

I can. And there's your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.
(Elizabeth, in a burst of terror, rushes to him and weeps against his hand.)
Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them. Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it! — Arthur Miller

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidae, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts. — Henry David Thoreau

A few old shits and some fucking woman," he snarled. "We're backing down to the likes o' these without a fight?" "No, no." Hardbread slung his own scarred shield onto his back. "I'm backing down, and these fellows here. You're going to stay, and fight Whirrun of Bligh on your own." "I'm what?" Redcrow frowned at Whirrun, twitchy, and Whirrun looked back, what showed of his face still stony as the Heroes themselves. "That's right," said Hardbread, "since you're itching for a brawl. Then I'm going to cart your hacked-up corpse back to your mummy and tell her not to worry 'cause this is the way you wanted it. You loved this fucking hill so much you just had to die here. — Joe Abercrombie

We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere - and we shall persevere - we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known. — Winston Churchill

If I had the wings of a swan, over these stony hills I would fly. I would fly to the arms of my true love, and there I'd be happy to die. — Susan Price

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My — Rabindranath Tagore

Therein, ye gods, ye make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.
Nor stony wall, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:
But life being weary of these worldly bars
Never lacks power to dismiss itself. — William Shakespeare

If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes. — Alexander MacLaren

The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A gleam of humor flickered in those obsidian eyes. I should warn you, Hannah: when we meet at Stony Cross Park, take care to avoid the mistletoe. For both our sakes. — Lisa Kleypas

Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Jerott's voice was stony. 'I am prepared to go wherever I can be of most help. I meant only that I expect to be too occupied to give the attention I ought to Mile Marthe's safety. I think M. Gaultier should come with us.'

'Then who,' said Lymond agreeably, 'do you suggest looks after the spinet?'

'Onophrion?'

'Jerott,' said Lymond, with the thinnest edge beginning to show in his voice. — Dorothy Dunnett

Heavens can witness I love none but you:
From my embracements thus he breaks away.
O that mine arms could close this isle about,
That I might pull him to me where I would!
Or that these tears that drizzle from mine eyes
Had power to mollify his stony heart,
That when I had him we might never part. — Christopher Marlowe

Innocent?" He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. "I've done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!"
"Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed."
"Even when it's stupid to try?" he asked with savage sarcasm.
"Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That's how you do it. — Robin Hobb

Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle-groves of August prairies; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perfidies; but sweeter, still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy Paradise of Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning London.
In mild meditation pace the cloisters; take your pleasure, sip your leisure, in the garden waterward; go linger in the ancient library; go worship in the scultured chapel; but little have you seen, just nothing do you know, not the sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine among the banded Bachelors, and see their convivial eyes and glasses sparkle. Not dine in bustling commons, during term time, in the hall; but tranquilly, by private hint, at a private table; some fine Templar's hospitably invited guest. — Herman Melville

This two-bit bar, this worn-out town, just a speck in the middle of a lonely grassy prairie with the stony hills beyond, the small fix-it-yourself house I'd bought for us - that was all ours, our world, our high life. It wasn't name-brand, shiny, or white picket fences, but none of that mattered. As long as we were together, it was good, it was clean, it was ours. — Cat Porter

I wondered stony afternoons owning all their vastness. — Naomi Shihab Nye

No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;-it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;-and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to belief in miracle, or to something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the stony science. — Hugh Miller

A stony road, hard on the feet. I would beg for us to sit down but you discouraged it, knowing that sitting was fatal, because of the willpower required to get up again. — Edna O'Brien

I'm sorry I could never see myself out
of the twitching fever of my heartache,
that I traded everything we had for
something that never ended up being.
But if I could take anything back, it wouldn't be
the glittering hope I stuck in the amber of your eyes,
or the sweet eager of our conversations.
No, it would be that last stony path to nothing,
when we both gave up without telling the other.
How silence arrived like a returned valentine
on that morning
we finally taught our phones not to ring. — Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

AN EXQUISITELY SHARPENED HATRED FOR the white man is of course an emotion not difficult for Negroes to harbor. Yet if truth be known, this hatred does not abound in every Negro's soul; it relies upon too many mysterious and hidden patterns of life and chance to flourish luxuriantly everywhere. Real hatred of the sort of which I speak - hatred so pure and obdurate that no sympathy, no human warmth, no flicker of compassion can make the faintest nick or scratch upon the stony surface of its being - is not common to all Negroes. — William Styron

There was more she wanted to say. He could feel the words scrabbling at the clasps of her thoughts, eager to be known. Freed. But she stood there, stony- faced and impassive. And he remembered the girl he had glimpsed from the Grotto - the one who let her shoulders drop when no one looked, the one who fought every day when no one noticed. The one who had once hoped that the Night Bazaar traded on dreams. She deserved more than loneliness. — Roshani Chokshi

We are the rocks and reefs of the human sea, tumultuous outcrops, magnets for wrecks. The peaks of mountains you cannot see: that's us, all right. Dark even on the brightest day. Stony and defiant of the prevailing currents until we are eventually worn down and dissolved. Sometimes soaked and sometimes dry as a bone. Hammered by tides and grimly standing our ground against the pounding. Probably even secretly enjoying the pounding. — Brian Doyle

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place ... — William Butler Yeats

This suggests that Palestine already had begun to suffer the soil erosion that during the centuries of Arab cultivation reduced it from the one-time land of milk and honey to a stony goat pasture. Saewulf — Barbara W. Tuchman

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother. — Agnes Repplier

For the first time in his life, Stony felt it. It ran like a hot wire, up from his spine, to the base of his skull. His mouth opened on its own.
He wanted to bite. He wanted to bite hard. — Daryl Gregory

Nobility on earth may be earned by the sword, but nobility of the soul must be sought in stony ways and through hard endeavor. I have to tell you to rejoice that you have been chosen. — Dorothy Dunnett

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! — J.R.R. Tolkien

If I'd known you'd look so beautiful, I would've gotten dressed up," Loki teased when Finn and Thomas brought him into the War Room. Finn shoved him into a seat unnecessarily hard,but Loki didn't protest.
"Don't get familiar with the Princess, Duncant told him,giving him a stony look.
"My apologies," Loki said. "I wouldn't want to get familiar with anyone."
Loki looked about the room. Duncan, Finn, Thomas, Tove,the Chancellor, and I were the ones set to meet Sara. The rest of the house was on standby, should we need them,but we didn't want to look like we were ambushing Sara when she arrived.
"Did you change your mind and decide to execute me?" Loki asked,looking us over. "Because you all look like you're going to a funeral."
"Not now," I said, fidgeting with my bracelet and watching the clock.
"Then when,Princess?" Loki asked. "Because we only have about fifteen minutes until I leave."
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. — Amanda Hocking

Even Reverend Norkells urged her to spend less time in the stony darkness of the church and to "look for Christ in the life around her. — M.L. Stedman

Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to love. — Rumi

You're carrying on as if I am being chased by hordes of men, when that is obviously not the case. At Stony Cross Park, men went out of their way to avoid my company - and you were one of them!"
The charge, though true, seemed to startle Sebastian. His face became taut, and he stared at her in stony silence. "You hardly made it easy for anyone to approach you," he said after a moment. "A man's vanity is more fragile than you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference. You could have exerted yourself a bit, you know. One brief meeting between the two of us ... one smile from you ... was all the encouragement I would have needed to jump on you like a grouse on laurel. — Lisa Kleypas

I saw a stony mask come upon her lined face as she slew the weak houswife she had been and gave birth to the warrior that is buried inside every woman's heart,one who is unleased when her children's lives are at stake. — Kamran Pasha

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. — Stephen Fry

I reached out and wrapped both my arms around one of John's. "Promise me we'll never be like them, okay?" I asked, with a shudder, nodding at Seth and Farah. "Calling each other babe in that annoying way?"
"We could never be like those two," John said, leading me away after giving Seth one last stony-eyed glare. — Meg Cabot

God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It'll spring up and glow, like
like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways. — John Masefield

At some point, Roth had gotten hold of my cell and replaced Zayne's name with Stony and listed his own number under Sexy Beast. What a tool — Jennifer L. Armentrout

He was already turning to raise his sword against a spiny-looking creature with nubbly, stony skin like a starfish.
'He thought of Ty on the beach with the starfish in his hand, smiling. It filled him with rage- he hadn't realized before how much demons seemed like the beautiful things of the world had been warped and sickened and made revolting. — Cassandra Clare

If we know where we want to go, then even a stony road is bearable. — Horst Koehler

Nothing from the summer carries more lasting allure for me than the memory of sitting with Ruth on the bank of a stream on campus, taking turns reading aloud from the books we held on our laps, while the wind wet leaves gossiping in the old trees above us and the creek rustled in its stony bed. — Scott Russell Sanders

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome. — Anthony Trollope

That's a lot of vegetables. "It is, yes, and if you eat them like a good girl ... " He lifted the silver lid on another plate, revealed a small pizza, with pepperoni arranged into a smiley face. She tried to give him a stony stare, but the laugh won out. "You think you're cute, don't you, pal?" "Adorable." "In this case, you can have adorable. Ow!" She managed the stony stare when he slapped her hand away from the pizza. "Vegetables first. — Nora Roberts

For however deep the fall from righteousness, if but repentance holds the heart, there is a path - a stony and a cruel path - whereby the height may be climbed again. — H. Rider Haggard

With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose. — Bertolt Brecht

"We will make such a chase as shall be accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds: Elves, Dwarves and Men. Forth the Three Hunters!" Like a deer he sprang away. Through the trees he sped. On and on he led them, tireless and swift, now that his mind was at last made up. The woods about the lake they left behind. Long slopes they climbed, dark, hard-edged against the sky already red with sunset. They passed away, grey shadows in a stony land. — J.R.R. Tolkien

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart. — Ivan Bunin

She'd hit the stony bottom of her own shallow depths. — Laini Taylor

Psychologist Arthur Aron of SUNY Stony Brook discovered that asking participants in an experiment to share their deepest feelings and beliefs for a single hour could generate the same sense of trust and intimacy that typically takes weeks, months, or years to form. — Reid Hoffman

After twenty centuries of stony sleep, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats - from 'The Second Coming — W.B.Yeats

The Holy Spirit is promised of God to be given to us, to do this work (of mortification). The taking away of the stony heart, that is, the stubborn, proud, rebellious, unbelieving heart, is, in general, the work of mortification that we treat of. — John Owen

The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all the motions of life. — Orson Scott Card

The wards were to my right. I stepped into the hall and walked confidently forward, yet fully expecting Matron to come bearing down upon me at any moment, like a pirate ship under full sail.
I must say, though, that I was not afraid. I would deal with her.
The new, stony Flavia de Luce would turn her away: send her scurrying with her tail between her legs.
The very idea delighted me. — Alan Bradley

He looked down through the green transparency to the stony bottom webbed with golden lines. Never still. If his soul could cast a reflection so briljant, and so intensely sweet, he might beg God to make such use of him. But that would be too childish. The actual sphere is not clear like this, but turbulent, angry. A vast human action is going on. Death watches. So if you have some happiness, conceal it. And when your heart is full, keep your mouth shut also. — Saul Bellow

He drank a good deal at times. But the alcohol did not seem to affect him. His stony expression never changed. But sometimes a strange, flashing glance from his cold eyes would rest upon Anna, full of some burning fierceness that was like hatred, and he would force her to drink with him, force her to swallow a little glassful of fiery spirit at a single gulp.
'I ought to shoot you, really,' he said to her once, in a dead voice. 'Conscientiously, it would be the best thing for me to do.'
She saw from the grave concentration on his face that his conscience did actually require him to kill her. And this puzzled her because she could not understand why her death should be a conscientious necessity. The thought of being shot did not seem to cause her any concern. — Anna Kavan

As you go down the water,' he said, 'you will find that the trees will fail, and you will come to a barren country. There the River flows in stony vales amid high moors, until at last after many leagues it comes to the tall island of the Tindrock, that we call Tol Brandir. There it casts its arms about the steep shores of the isle, and falls then with a great noise and smoke over the cataracts of Rauros down into the Nindalf, the Wetwang as it is called in your tongue. That is a wide region of sluggish fen where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided. There the Entwash flows in by many mouths from the Forest of Fangorn in the west. About that stream, on this side of the Great River, lies Rohan. On the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Pain has been and grief enough and bitterness and crying,
Sharp ways and stony ways I think it was she trod;
But all there is to see now is a white bird flying,
Whose blood-stained wings go circling high - circling up to God! — Margaret Widdemer

Davos could not complain of chill. The smooth stony passages — George R R Martin

Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie, till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The eyes were hollow and the carven head was broken, but about the high, stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.
"They cannot conquer for ever!" said Frodo. — J.R.R. Tolkien

This whole time, my whole life, that harsh, stony path was leading up to this one point. I followed it blindly, stumbling along the way, scraped and weary, without any idea of where it was leading, without ever realizing that with every step I was approaching the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. And now that I've reached it, now that I'm here, I want to catch it in my hand, hold onto it forever to look back on - the point at which my new life really began. — Tabitha Suzuma

In 1850, August Salzmann photographed, near Jerusalem, the road to Beith-Lehem (as it was spelled at the time): nothing but stony ground, olive trees; but three tenses dizzy my consciousness: my present, the time of Jesus, and that of the photographer, all this under the instance of 'reality' - and no longer through the elaborations of the text, whether fictional or poetic, which itself is never credible down to the root. — Roland Barthes

I always complained about my mother's stony heart. Turns out I'm built just the same. — Laurie Graham

Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.

Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass in vain!

At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude, my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh awaken!

What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday sun---what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst---

Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of pain? — Rabindranath Tagore

A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall heed My ordinances and do them. Ezekiel 36:26,27 — Joyce Meyer

When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race-a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint-there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found. — Mary Midgley

We don't like murders here, said a man's voice, low and threatening, from the back of the crowd. Megan glanced at Cassie and her friends. They looked away, as if they didn't see what was happening.
Anger boiled in her chest. Why wouldn't they leave her alone? She hadn't killed anyone. She hadn't killed Harlen Trooper, all those years ago. She knew it and the judge knew it. She hadn't even been charged.
If I wanted to, I could have you all killed, she thought, and was stunned when the thought didn't scare her the way it should. She looked at their faces, stony and stubbled, shiny with alcoholic sweat. The power in her chest hadn't worked against Ktana Leyak, but it could against them, this miserable bunch of humans with their heavy boots and beer guts.
She pictured those guts exploding. She pictured the terror in their eyes when they realized they were messing with the wrong fucking demon, they were -
Demon? — Stacia Kane

The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary imperatives and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walrus-like on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms. Not — Bill Bryson