Stony

Famous quotes containing the word stony:

    What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
    Out of this stony rubbish?
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, 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 (1817–1862)

    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 (1865–1939)