Shells

Famous quotes containing the word shells:

    It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    As many as the shells that are on the shore, so many are
    the pains of love; the darts that wound are steeped in
    much poison.
    Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)