Shell

Famous quotes containing the word shell:

    We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Billy: You dropped some shell in there.
    Ted: It’s all right. Makes it crunchier that way. You like French toast crunchy, don’t you?
    Robert Benton (b. 1932)

    I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg- shell on the rocks.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)