Limestone Quotes:

The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.

- John McPhee

topic: Marine, Limestone, Summit, Mount Everest

If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

- John McPhee

source: John McPhee (2000). “Annals of the Former World”, p.127, Macmillan

topic: Motivational, Writing, Marine, Limestone, Mt Everest

On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

- William Butler Yeats

source: "Under Ben Bulben" l. 89 (1939). The final three lines are in fact inscribed on Yeats's gravestone.

topic: Life, Death, Eye, Limestone, Cold Eyes

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.23, Courier Corporation

topic: Mind, Three, Pieces, Limestone

My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?

- Bruce Sterling

topic: Ideas, Environmental, Rotting, Limestone, Amusement Parks

Peering, I heard the hooves come down the hill. The posse passed, twelve horse; the leader's face Was worn as limestone on an ancient sill.

- Allen Tate

source: Allen Tate (1960). “Poems”, New York : Scribner

topic: Horse, Leader, Faces, Limestone

It is so easy to waste our lives: Our days, our hours, our minutes ... it is so easy to exist instead of live.

- Anna Quindlen

source: Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

topic: Waste, Easy, Hours, Limestone, Fifth Avenue

isn't it wonderful that two of the most sacred and symbolic plants, the olive and the vine, live on almost nothing, a terrace of limestone, sun and rain ...

- Janet Erskine Stuart

topic: Rain, Two, Vines, Limestone, Sun And Rain

Well, I don't like the word 'rock star,' the two words, 'rock star.' Not even 'soft rock star. Not even limestone star. I don't like those words.

- Chris Martin

topic: Stars, Rocks, Two, Limestone

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

- John McPhee

source: "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

topic: Ocean, Moving, Writing, Limestone, Mt Everest

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Essays, Second Series "The Poet" (1844)

topic: Brilliant, Has Beens, Limestone, Tropes

Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by

- William Butler Yeats

topic: Life, Tombstone, Eye, Horsemen, Limestone

We've had a wonderful, wonderful life together. We've been in many places, we've had the experiences, and now we have the memories. But most of all we have developed the solid knowledge and understanding and background regarding the foundation stones of life, so that we know for a surety that what we are doing [in helping to build the Kingdom of God] is true. Those foundation stones are granite stones; not soft, not limestones. They are granite.

- David B. Haight

topic: Life, Memories, Understanding, Life Together, Limestone

You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.

- Peter Zumthor

topic: Glasses, House, Skins, Veneer, Limestone

Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.227, Jazzybee Verlag

topic: Travel, Greatness, Men, Pastures, Limestone

Nelson Mandela once remarked that he befriended his jailers, those grim, khaki-clad overseers of his decades of hard labor in a limestone quarry, by "exploiting their good qualities." Asked if he believed all people were kind at their core, he responded, "There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse their inherent goodness." If that sounds like wishful thinking, well, he actually did it.

- Marc Ian Barasch

source: Marc Ian Barasch (2010). “The Compassionate Life: Walking the Path of Kindness”, p.11, ReadHowYouWant.com

topic: Life, Thinking, People, Jailer, Limestone

Guess what it is that turns plants to coal. Pressure. Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble. Pressure. Guess what it is that turns Briony's heart to stone. Pressure. Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric's, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.

- Franny Billingsley

topic: Stars, Heart, Moon, Limestone

German is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate.

- Bernard Berenson

topic: Limestone

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.

- Edward Abbey

source: Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.164, Macmillan

topic: Technology, Eagles, Ravens, Limestone, Flying Machines

We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren't there enough of those in the world?

- Rick Riordan

source: Rick Riordan (2010). “The Kane Chronicles, The, Book One: Red Pyramid”, Hyperion

topic: Rocks, Gold, World, Limestone, Hieroglyphics

The apparent physical stability of reefs belies an underlying natural turmoil of growth, death and destruction of calcareous organisms. Much like a modern city, reefs are constantly being rebuilt and torn down at the same time. Corals are the bricks, broken pieces of plant and animal skeletons the sand, and algal crusts and chemical cements the mortar. Reef growth is determined by the production, accumulation, and cementation of all this calcareous stuff into solid limestone.

- Jeremy Jackson

topic: Nature, Animal, Skeletons, Mortar, Limestone