Stony

Famous quotes containing the word stony:

    “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)

    “Now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
    A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
    An acre of stony ground,
    Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
    Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable....”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)