Shaft Quotes

The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. (Aesop)
O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken! View quote
Walter Scott
That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high. View quote
Edmund Waller
Ah, when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro' all the circle of the golden year. View quote
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft, 'With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.' View quote
Aeschylus
Insatiate archer could not one suffice Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn. View quote
Edward Young
One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully. View quote
Arthur Sullivan
Like a young eagle who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, See their own feathers pluck'd to wing the dart Which rank corruption destines for their heart. View quote
Thomas Moore
Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light. View quote
Omar Khayyám
Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft. View quote
Ray Bradbury
The skyscraper style first advocated by Louis Sullivan - a tower of strongly vertical character with clear definitions among base, shaft, and crown - has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of this building type. (Martin Filler)
As a woman, I feel women get the shaft all the time. View quote
Rita Wilson
It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. View quote
Henry James
When hosts of foes with foes engage, And round th' anointed hero rage, The cleaving fauchion I misguide, And turn the feather'd shaft aside. View quote
Joseph Addison
A long bow and a strong bow, and let the sky grow dark! The cord to the nock, the shaft to the ear, and the king of Koth for a mark! View quote
Robert E. Howard
The mitigating feature in the gloom of those far-off days was the shaft of light sunk by Christian missions, a shaft of light to which we owe our initial enlightenment. With successive governments of the time doing little or nothing to ameliorate the harrowing suffering of the black man at the hands of slave drivers, men like Dr. David Livingstone and Dr. John Philip and other illustrious men of God stood for social justice in the face of overwhelming odds. View quote
Albert Lutuli
It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids. View quote
Hunter S. Thompson
The shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head. View quote
H. Rider Haggard
these days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face and when you do you'll know how it was meant to be see the signs and know their meaning. View quote
Natalie Merchant
Now she took the sword back into her hand and knelt on the rim of the invisible blackness below. She had gone this path once before and once only, and never thought to find any necessity in life strong enough to drive her down again. The way was the strangest she had ever known. There was, she thought, no such passage in all the world save here. It had not been built for human feet to travel. It had not been built for feet at all. It was a narrow, polished shaft that cork-screwed round and round. A snake might have slipped in it and gone shooting down, round and round in dizzy circles-but no snake on earth was big enough to fill that shaft. No human travelers had worn the sides of the spiral so smooth, and she did not care to speculate on what creatures had polished it so, through what ages of passage. View quote
C. L. Moore
But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew Midst foliage of no kindred hue; Through the laburnum's dropping gold Rose the light shaft of Orient mould, And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the mossbeds at its feet. (Felicia Hemans)
In 1831 Victor Hugo had written that he already heard 'the full sound of revolution, still deep down in the earth, pushing out under the kingdom in Europe to its subterranean galleries from the central shaft of the mine which is Paris. 1847 the sound was loud and close. In 1848 the explosion burst. View quote
Eric Hobsbawm
The value of my cry great will be its advantage to degrees. The chief of men, shield of warriors. The extensive booty of the ashen shaft is my fair Awen. A shield before a prince, bright his smile, Heroic, aspiring, the most heroic is Urien. View quote
Taliesin
A shaft of fire that falls like dew, And melts and maddens all my blood, From out thy spirit flashes through The burning glass of womanhood. View quote
George William Russell
Isaacs has a cheap Bic pen in his hand. He runs his fingers down the shaft, inverts it, runs his fingers down the shaft, over and over, in a motion that is mechanical rather than impatient. View quote
J. M. Coetzee