Idle Descent

Famous quotes containing the words idle and/or descent:

“What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to some man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger
and purer temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“And every stone shall cry,
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)