Wrought Iron Quotes

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But Jace", Clary said. "Valentine taught him more than just fighting. He taught him languages, and how to play the piano" "That was Jocelyn's influence." Sebastian said her name unwillingly, as if he hated the sound of it. "She thought Valentine ought to be able to talk about books, art, music...not just killing things. He passed that on to Jace." A wrought iron blue gate rose to their left. Sebastian ducked under it and beckoned Clary to follow him. She didn't have to duck but went after him, her hands stuffed into her pockets. "What about you?" she asked. He held up his hands. They were unmistakably her mother's hands - dexterous, long-fingered, meant for holding a brush or a pen. "I learned to play the instruments of war, " he said, "and paint in blood. I am not like Jace.
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.
Tim Tharp (The Spectacular Now)
Richard has informed me he is shopping for his white picket fence. I'm happy behind my black wrought iron fence. The one with the pointy spikes on top. White never really was my color.
Laurell K. Hamilton (Danse Macabre (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #14))
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips black in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don't do it--she's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty blank face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it
Sharon Olds
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.
Sven Birkerts
Jay stopped and unlocked an iron gate with finals wrought in the shape of pineapples.
Poppy Z. Brite (Exquisite Corpse)
The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.
Sara Sheridan (London Calling (Mirabelle Bevan Mystery #2))
Were not faster-than-the-speed-of-light generation. Were not even the Next-New-thing-Generation. Were the Soon-To-Be-Obselete kids, and we've crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what's up-- the future looms ahead like a black-wrought iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn't have any let-up in him.
Tim Tharp (The Spectacular Now)
The wrought-iron gate squeaked as Lucas opened it. He lowered the rented bike down the stone steps and onto the sidewalk. To his right was the most famous Globe Hotel in Paris, disguised under another name. In front of the entrance five Curukians sat on mopeds. Lu-cas and his eighteen-month-old friend then shot out across the street and through the invisible beam of an-other security camera. He rode diagonally across the place de la Concorde and headed toward the river. It seemed only natural. The motorcycles trailed him. He pedaled fast across the Alex-andre III bridge and zipped past Les Invalides hospital. He tried to turn left at the Rodin Museum, but Goper rode next to him, blocking his escape.
Paul Aertker (Brainwashed (Crime Travelers, #1))
In this wrought-iron world of criss-cross cause and effect, could it be that the hidden throb I stole from them did not affect their future?
Vladimir Nabokov
Flowers grow on her tiny wrought-iron balcony, and in summer she can estimate what time of day it is by feeling how wide the petals of the evening primroses have opened.
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
I press my face against the wrought-iron bars on my window - they are arched and curl into the shape of roses, as i by making a pretty pattern, they can pretend they're something they're not.
Amy Ewing (The Jewel (The Lone City, #1))
I thought I appreciated books, but this was an alter to the book gods. It was hard not to be impressed. I didn't know what had the most impact: the rosewood shelving, the rolling library ladders, the mezzanine floor with the ornate spiral wrought-iron staircases at each end, the carved moldings, the scent of well-loved books, or the silky Aubusson rugs in a soft faded palette of rose, sage and aqua.
Victoria Abbott (The Christie Curse (Book Collector Mystery, #1))
Countries are forged by war; perhaps girls are, too. New England and I will be reborn together in this war between the witches and the Brothers. Between Maura and me. I am newly wrought -- a girl of steel and snow and heartrending good-byes. My magic is renewed by my heartbreak. It spills out my fingertips, swirling around me. The wind picks up, bitter cold now. The rain turns abruptly to snow, haloing the gas streetlamps like iron angels. Enormous snowflakes begin to fall -- fast, faster -- obscuring my sister, hiding her and Brenna and the carriage and the gray stone building that has become my home. I am all alone in a sea of whirling white. It feels right that it should be so.
Jessica Spotswood (Star Cursed (The Cahill Witch Chronicles, #2))
Patrick had the attic room, which he’d decorated in shades of granite, wrought iron, and self-loathing.
Alexis Hall (Shadows & Dreams (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #2))
As I drove out the wrought iron gates I had entered, I noticed for the first time how intricate and beautiful they were. They were forged by hand so many years ago and had stood the test of time.
Buffy Andrews (Gina and Mike (Yearbook, #1))
Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days.
J.E. Gordon (The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor (Princeton Science Library, 58))
The Lowe family had always been the undisputed villains of their town’s ancient, bloodstained story, and no one understood that better than the Lowe brothers. The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swatched in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.
Amanda Foody, christine lynn Herman (All of Us Villains (All of Us Villains, #1))
PAPER TOWERS The library was on the second floor of the House, not far from my room. It had two floors—the first held the majority of the books and a balcony wrapped in a wrought-iron railing held another set. It was a cavalcade of tomes, all in immaculate rows, and with study carrels and tables thrown in for good measure. It was my home away from home(away from home. I walked inside and paused for a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and dust—the perfumes of knowledge. The library was empty of patrons as far as I could tell, but I could hear the rhythmic squeal of a library cart somewhere in the rows. I followed them down until I found the dark-haired vampire shelving books with mechanical precision. I knew him only as “the librarian.” He was a fount of information, and he had a penchant for leaving books outside my door.
Chloe Neill (Drink Deep (Chicagoland Vampires, #5))
I’ve started dreaming in Spanish, which has never happened before. I wake up feeling different, like something inside me is changing, something chemical and irreversible. There’s a magic here working its way through my veins. There’s something about the vegetation, too, that I respond to instinctively - the stunning bougainvillea, the flamboyants and jacarandas, the orchids growing from the trunks of the mysterious ceiba trees. And I love Havana, its noise and decay and painted ladyness. I could happily sit on one of those wrought-iron balconies for days, or keep my grandmother company on her porch, with its ringside view of the sea. I’m afraid to lose all this, to lose Abuela Celia again. But sooner or later I’d have to return to New York. I know now it’s where I belong - not instead of here, but more than here. How can I tell my grandmother this?
Cristina García (Dreaming in Cuban)
Child detective Noah Edward was standing in front of his new home. It was an old-fashioned building made of brick. It had a tall, spiky wrought iron fence. There was a billboard attached to the side of the fence. It read “Richard Seddon’s Home for Vulnerable Children.
Isaac du Toit (Noah Edward and the Awful Orphanage (Noah Edward, #5))
Donkin’s invention preserved foods beautifully, though the early cans, made of wrought iron, were heavy and practically impossible to get into. One brand bore instructions to open them with a hammer and chisel. Soldiers usually attacked them with bayonets or fired bullets into them.
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
The Daffodil-Yellow Villa The new villa was enormous, a tall, square Venetian mansion, with faded daffodil-yellow walls, green shutters, and a fox-red roof. It stood on a hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by unkempt olive groves and silent orchards of lemon and orange trees. ... the little walled and sunken garden that ran along one side of the house, its wrought-iron gates scabby with rust, had roses, anemones and geraniums sprawling across the weed-grown paths ... ... there were fifteen acres of garden to explore, a vast new paradise sloping down to the shallow, tepid sea.
Gerald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1))
The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No colour at all, save for the neighbouring trees and grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colourless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.
Erin Morgenstern
Down the street, tree branches strung in purple Halloween lights began to shudder and sway. Dusty whirlwinds rose from the ground, and from the north came a great rush of wind. From Congo Square, she thought. Where the slaves danced and sang. "...and St. Louis Cemetery," whispered in her ear. The wind blew as cold as the icy breath of Lake Superior. Blowing veins seizured round the wrought iron gate. Yet the music continued. The only one oblivious to the sudden shift in the air--as if she were expecting it--was Angelique, who continued her dance, face to the sky. As though nothing had changed, though everything had.
Eve Wallinga (The Voodoo Breast: A Novel of Healing)
Listen,” I say, my gaze going to the road, watching for headlights. “I don’t know how long I have, but if Bogdana knows where you are, it’s not safe. Fill your pockets with salt. Rowan berries will keep you from being glamoured by their magic. They hate cold-wrought iron. And they can’t lie.” I correct myself. “We. We can’t lie.
Holly Black (The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1))
Gregori stared with dismay at the small, two-story house enclosed in wrought-iron latticework and sandwiched between two smaller, rather rundown properties in the crowded French Quarter of New Orleans. He inserted the key in the lock and turned to look at Savannah's face. It was lit up with expectation, her blue eyes shining. "I have definitely lost all good sense," he muttered as he pushed open the door. The interior was dark, but he could see everything easily. The room was layered with dust, old sheets covered the furniture, and the wallpaper was peeling in small curls from the walls. "Isn't it beautiful?" Savannah flung out her hands and turned in a circle. Jumping into Gregori's arms, she hugged him tightly. "It's so perfect!" He couldn't help himself; he kissed her inviting mouth. "Perfect for torching. Savannah,did you even look at this place before you bought it?" She laughed and ruffled his thick mane of hair. "Don't be such a pessimist. Can't you see its potential?" "It is a firetrap," he groused.
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
He tip-toed past the double bed that had been placed in a corner - wrought-iron headboard, embroidered pillows, amulets against the evil-eye and a satiny, cobalt-blue bedspread. Blue was Iskender's favourite colour. It was the colour for boys, which meant the sky was a boy. So were the rivers and lakes. And the oceans, though he had yet to see one.
Elif Shafak
The Center squatted on the corner of Juniper and Montfort behind a wrought-iron gate, like an old bulldog used to guarding its territory.
Jodi Picoult (A Spark of Light)
for the entire wrought-iron gate, not just the lock, liquefied into a puddle of molten metal. Whoops. My bad.
Rick Riordan (9 from the Nine Worlds (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #4))
My father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on the phone, and drank sherry and ate raw meat, in the form of chorizo, at five o'clock. Until the day in the yard with my playmate I thought this was what fathers did. Then I began to catalog and notice. They mowed lawns. They drank beer. They played in the yard with their kids, walked around the block with their wives, piled into campers, and, when they went out, wore joke ties or polo shirts, not Phi Beta Kappa keys and tailored vests.
Alice Sebold (Lucky)
come to a stop in front of the most prominent structure, a clock tower with no clock. There is a painted-on clock face. “It’s odd here,” says Korede. “Every hour someone climbs the belfry and paints the correct time. There is no bell in the belfry, but a rod with a loop of wrought iron marks the spot where one might have hung. There is a strict rota for this, adhered to quite rigidly by the townsfolk.
Tade Thompson (Rosewater (The Wormwood Trilogy, #1))
Mom dropped us within the massive wrought-iron gates after doling out lunch money which I promptly tucked in my bra—because while on the run, things may often fall out of your pockets, but never your bra.
A. Kirk (Demons at Deadnight (Divinicus Nex Chronicles, #1))
Someone once said that there's nothing more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman, but I think that's only true until the women get revenge. And I'm done with spending my days hidden away behind heavy curtains and wrought-iron gates. I want to burst forth into the sun and unfold and blossom there, like a waterfall cutting through rock. No more beautiful dead girls. No more sculptures made of women's bones. Never again.
Kayla Bashe (Graveyard Sparrow: paranormal regency lesbian romance)
I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one. “But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull . . . rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.” I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities. After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us. “My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth. “I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm. “Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?” “Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters.
Pierce Brown (Iron Gold)
It remained dark. Outside the window, the balcony was grey. Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I did not indeed see a less negative colour, but I felt as it were an effort towards a less negative colour, the pulsation of a hesitating ray that struggled to discharge its light. A moment later the balcony was as pale and luminous as a standing water at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of the balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to indicate a deliberate application, an artist’s satisfaction, and which so much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their somber and happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges of happiness and peace of mind.
Marcel Proust (Du côté de chez Swann (À la recherche du temps perdu, #1))
She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didn't mind. She'd never been superstitious. The apartment was filled with items she'd collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which she'd found a note reading, "Long may we run. -Gilbert." Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmaker's twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community. Other people's treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. She'd probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmother's antique shop.
Susan Wiggs (The Apple Orchard (Bella Vista Chronicles, #1))
It sat proudly atop the hill behind wrought-iron gates, with smooth lawns, tennis courts, and shiny classroom buildings, a monstrous bastion of arrogant elegance, glowing like a phoenix above the ramshackle neighborhood of Chicken Hill.
James McBride (The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store)
father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on the phone, and drank sherry and ate raw meat, in the form of chorizo, at five o’clock. Until the day in the yard with my
Alice Sebold (Lucky)
person, the buildings towering before us. Many of the exteriors are adorned in vibrant colors—coral, canary yellow, and turquoise—the sun bathing them in an amber glow. The walls match the flashy cars surrounding us, the paint on the structures peeling in places. Clotheslines hang from intricate wrought iron and stone balconies, clothes flapping in the breeze; power lines zigzag across buildings. People are stacked upon one another here, crammed into any available space, spilling from the buildings.
Chanel Cleeton (Next Year in Havana)
that first he wrought and afterward he taught. From the Gospel he took these words, and this metaphor he added likewise thereunto, that if gold rust, what shall iron do? For if a Priest, upon whom we trust, be foul, no wonder a layman may yield to lust.
Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales)
In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel of the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
They had to raise enormous stones, massive pieces of wrought iron, heavy corner-clamps and huge portions of cylinder, with an object-glass weighing nearly 30,000 pounds, above the line of perpetual snow for more than 10,000 feet in height, after crossing desert prairies, impenetrable forests, fearful rapids, far from all centers of population, and in the midst of savage regions, in which every detail of life becomes an almost insoluble problem. And yet, notwithstanding these innumerable obstacles, American genius triumphed.
Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon)
The Foundry grounds were surrounded by a twenty-five foot wrought iron fence and Lazlo sniffed when he saw it.   "That thing might look impressive to tourists," he said, "but it wouldn't keep out a fly, let alone a…"   Lazlo trailed off as a large black gorecrow approached the fence. The bird flew high enough to pass over the bars, but the instant it crossed the fence's perimeter, there was a blue flash and the bird burst into flames and plummeted to the ground.   "Like I said, Baron's got himself a hell of a security system,
Tim Waggoner (The Nekropolis Archives)
The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swathed in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.
Amanda Foody, christine lynn Herman (All of Us Villains (All of Us Villains, #1))
The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swatched in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.
Amanda Foody, christine lynn Herman
A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign overhead said Hogwarts Express, 11 o’clock. Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the ticket box had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. He had done it.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
If Snow kept weaving around the corners, she would reach the center of the maze and her mother's beloved aviary. The two-story wrought iron dome looked like a giant birdcage. It was her mother's pride and joy and the first thing she had commissioned when she became queen. She'd always had a love of birds. Snow's mother kept several species inside the netted walls, and she patiently explained each bird's nature to Snow in detail. The two had spent countless hours watching the aviary, with Snow naming all of the creatures inside it. Her favorite was Snowball, a small white canary.
Jen Calonita (Mirror, Mirror (Twisted Tales))
Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them.
P.D. James (The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14))
But before the friends settled on a wrought-iron bench with distance from others, they stopped to buy their kulfi. Alice took pistachio, and Perveen had plain cardamom. There was a brief squabble about paying the vendor, which Perveen won. The cold, sweet ice cream was a most comforting taste after all the tension of the day.
Sujata Massey (The Bombay Prince (Perveen Mistry, #3))
Love, that is first and last of all things made, The light that has the living world for shade, The spirit that for temporal veil has on The souls of all men woven in unison, One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought, And alway through new act and passion new Shines the divine same body and beauty through, The body spiritual of fire and light That is to worldly noon as noon to night; Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man And spirit within the flesh whence breath began; Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime; Love, that is blood within the veins of time; That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand, Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land, And with the pulse and motion of his breath Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death, The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live Through day and night of things alternative, Through silence and through sound of stress and strife, And ebb and flow of dying death and life: Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears, Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears, That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings; Love that is root and fruit of terrene things; Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown, The whole world's fiery forces not burn down; Love, that what time his own hands guard his head The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead; Love, that if once his own hands make his grave The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save; Love, that for very life shall not be sold, Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold; So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell, Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell; So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given, Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven; Love that is fire within thee and light above, And lives by grace of nothing but of love; Through many and lovely thoughts and much desire Led these twain to the life of tears and fire; Through many and lovely days and much delight Led these twain to the lifeless life of night.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (Tristram of Lyonesse: And Other Poems)
Everywhere I traveled I saw this death space in action, and I felt what it means to be held. At Ruriden columbarium in Japan, I was held by a sphere of Buddhas glowing soft blue and purple. At the cemetery in Mexico, I was held by a single wrought-iron fence in the light of tens of thousands of flickering amber candles. At the open-air pyre in Colorado, I was held within the elegant bamboo walls, which kept mourners safe as the flames shot high. There was magic to each of these places. There was grief, unimaginable grief. But in that grief there was no shame. These were places to meet despair face to face and say, 'I see you waiting there. And I feel you, strongly. But you do not demean me.
Caitlin Doughty (From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death)
Academia is an odd place. Stately buildings and ivy, wrought iron fences, and libraries fragrant with the smell of old books. Young people scurry to and from class, fresh, energetic, and naive. But in the long halls and narrow offices, those who work there fester in the dark like overeducated viral agents. Wet-eyed professors with obscure, irrelevant specialties and inferiority complexes browbeat students. Administrators, buffeted by faculty contempt and general inefficiency, sink into venal scheming. Any college campus is a circus, complete with color, entertainment, and the occasional glimpse of something really amazing. At Dorian University, the circus had a large number of clowns and a truly impressive freak show.
John Donohue (Tengu: The Mountain Goblin (Connor Burke Martial Arts Book 3))
Her attention was fixed so completely on Jane that she did not see her own death hurtling toward her head. The poker slammed into Edwina’s skull, and Lily felt the crack of crushing bone, transmitted straight to her hand through wrought iron. Edwina dropped to the floor without uttering a sound. Lily lost her grip, and the falling poker clanged as it hit wood. She stared down at what she had just done. At Edwina’s head, the skull caved in. At the blood, flowing like a black river. And suddenly the room darkened, and her legs wobbled out from beneath her. She slid to the floor, landing on her rump. She dropped her head in her lap and could feel nothing: no pain, no sensation at all in her limbs. She was floating disembodied on the edge of blackness.
Tess Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club)
And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the lightbulb. I would think of Haarlem, each substantial church set behind its wrought-iron fence and its barrier of doctrine. And I would know again that in darkness God’s truth shines most clear.
Corrie ten Boom (The Hiding Place)
Belle blinked at the vision before her and inhaled sharply. Books! Books everywhere. The enormous room was two stories tall, with a spiraling stairway on each side leading up to the upper level. Leather-bound volumes filled the shelves from floor to ceiling on both floors, and the upper level looked down upon them with an open loft area surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron railing. Several rolling ladders were in front of the bookcases to allow easy access to even the highest-placed books. And best of all were the chairs and couches around the floor, and the pillows piled high by the windows, perfect for getting comfortable with a story. The library was filled with sunlight during the day, as well as having numerous lamps available for cozy nighttime reading.
Shoshanna Evers (Beauty and the Beast)
Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved with them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither of them broke step: in silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through as though the dark metal were smoke.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
The cemetery has a wrought-iron gate, with an intricate scrollwork archway over it, and an inscription: Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I Will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me. Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I’ve known has had a way of going missing. They skip town, or turn perfidious, or else they drop like flies, and then where are you?
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
He's MINE", I howled. "Mine! And I'm his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don't you?" He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard. I turned my head to the side and spat instead. "I told you 'no', dammit. I told you I'd follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you'd take the way I felt. Well, you can't! Hammer and me - we're twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can't untangle us, and if you did, you'd have to break us! Don't you see what you've done? You tried to break Hammer! He's mine! My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don't care for me!
Amy Lane (Hammer & Air)
Bearded Oaks" The oaks, how subtle and marine, Bearded, and all the layered light Above them swims; and thus the scene, Recessed, awaits the positive night. So, waiting, we in the grass now lie Beneath the languorous tread of light: The grassed, kelp-like, satisfy The nameless motions of the air. Upon the floor of light, and time, Unmurmuring, of polyp made, We rest; we are, as light withdraws, Twin atolls on a shelf of shade. Ages to our construction went, Dim architecture, hour by hour: And violence, forgot now, lent The present stillness all its power. The storm of noon above us rolled, Of light the fury, furious gold, The long drag troubling us, the depth: Dark is unrocking, unrippling, still. Passion and slaughter, ruth, decay descend, minutely whispering down, Silted down swaying streams, to lay Foundation for our voicelessness. All our debate is voiceless here, As all our rage, the rage of stone; If hope is hopeless, then fearless is fear, And history is thus undone. Our feet once wrought the hollow street With echo when the lamps were dead All windows, once our headlight glare Disturbed the doe that, leaping fled. I do not love you less that now The caged heart makes iron stroke, Or less that all that light once gave The graduate dark should now revoke. We live in time so little time And we learn all so painfully, That we may spare this hour's term To practice for eternity.
Robert Penn Warren (The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren)
Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back.
Jack London (The Iron Heel)
Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of those men and women who stayed for any reason left behind them some monument, some structure of marble and brick and stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps went out and the planes came in and the office buildings crowded the blocks of Canal Street, something irreducible of beauty and romance remained; not in every street perhaps, but in so many that the landscape is for me the landscape of those times always, and walking now in the starlit streets of the Quarter or the Garden District I am in those times again. I suppose that is the nature of the monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian columns and wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that this or that man walked here. No, that what he felt in one time in one spot continues. The moon that rose over New Orleans then still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. The feeling, at least here...and there...it remains the same.
Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1))
When he was alone, José Arcadio Buendía consoled himself with the dream of the infinite rooms. He dreamed that he was getting out of bed, opening the door and going into an identical room with the same bed with a wrought-iron head, the same wicker chair, and the same small picture of the Virgin of Help on the back wall. From that room he would go into another that was just the same, the door of which would open into another that was just the same, the door of which would open into another one just the same, and then into another exactly alike, and so on to infinity. He liked to go from room to room, as in a gallery of parallel mirrors, until Prudencio Aguilar would touch him on the shoulder. Then he would go back from room to room, walking in reverse, going back over his trail, and he would find Prudencio Aguilar in the room of reality. But one night, two weeks after they took him to| his bed, Prudencio Aguilar touched his shoulder in an intermediate room and he stayed there forever, thinking that it was the real room.
Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
that living bodies, fundamentally considered, are not associations of organs which can be understood by studying them first apart, and then as it were federally; but must be regarded as consisting of certain primary webs or tissues, out of which the various organs — brain, heart, lungs, and so on — are compacted, as the various accommodations of a house are built up in various proportions of wood, iron, stone, brick, zinc, and the rest, each material having its peculiar composition and proportions. No man, one sees, can understand and estimate the entire structure or its parts — what are its frailties and what its repairs, without knowing the nature of the materials. And the conception wrought out by Bichat, with his detailed study of the different tissues, acted necessarily on medical questions as the turning of gas-light would act on a dim, oil-lit street, showing new connections and hitherto hidden facts of structure which must be taken into account in considering the symptoms of maladies and the action of medicaments.
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other’s chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction. “News?” asked the taller of the two. “The best,” replied Severus Snape. The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men’s long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched. “Thought I might be late,” said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. “It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good?” Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved with them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
MY MOTHER ONCE TOLD ME that peace was the only way Astrea could survive. We had no need for vast armies, she said, no need to force our children into becoming warriors. We didn’t court war like other countries, in an effort to take more than we needed. Astrea was enough, she said. She never imagined that war would come to us, courted or not. She would live just long enough to see how poorly peace fared against the Kalovaxians’ wrought-iron blades and savage greed. My mother was the Queen of Peace, but I know too well that peace isn’t enough.
Laura Sebastian (Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy, #2))
I was too awestruck to speak. Vines of bright pink flowers danced over a wrought-iron arbor. I recognized them immediately as the very same variety, bougainvillea, that grew in Greenhouse No. 4 at the New York Botanical Garden. Just beyond, two potted trees stood at attention- a lemon, its shiny yellow globes glistening in the sunlight, and what looked like an orange, studded with the tiniest fruit I'd ever seen. "What is this?" I asked, fascinated. "A kumquat," she said. "Lady Anna used to pick them for the children." She reached out to pluck one of the tiny oranges from the tree. "Here, try for yourself." I held it in my hand, admiring its smooth, shiny skin. I sank my teeth into the flesh of the fruit. Its thin skin disintegrated in my mouth, releasing a burst of sweet and sour that made my eyes shoot open and a smile spread across my face. "Oh, my," I said. "I've never had anything like it." Mrs. Dilloway nodded. "You should try the clementines, then. They're Persian." I walked a few paces further, admiring the potted orchids- at least a hundred specimens, so exquisite they looked like Southern belles in hoop skirts. On the far wall were variegated ferns, bleeding hearts, and a lilac tree I could smell from the other end of the room.
Sarah Jio (The Last Camellia)
The days became for Christina endless preparation. Ceaseless winds tore through her massing battle ranks, the grey cold sun above marking the timeless date. With skies of blue and cloud overhead, driving, uncompromising time stood still, lingering, as if giving Christina precious eons to perfect her shaving straight razor cuts of mind and sword. She worked alone now, forging the essence of herself in the policies and ways of hammer and anvil, pounding away with the classic, living Japanese blade. Her deft hands spun dervishly, wroughting out the iron of her will, fashioning a blade-mind remade unto her. --Brickley, The Lady and the Samurai
Douglas M. Laurent
She sinks into the armchair by the window. It's soft, deep, and striped in her favorite colors: dusty pink and green. Nearly a year and a half after Francois died, Amandine insisted on redesigning the bedroom and, although Heloise protested at the time, she's grateful for it now. The room is a fairy tale, an escape from reality, a reminder of the romance of the past instead of the grief of the present. The bed is wrought-iron with white sheets and a canopy of cream gauze. The desks, bookshelves, and matching wardrobe are all original Victorian antiques painted white. With the touch of a sparkling crystal chandelier, Amandine created a room that gives Heloise a tiny smile of pleasure every time she wakes.
Menna van Praag (The Witches of Cambridge)
Hymn to Mercury : Continued 11. ... Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, He in his sacred crib deposited The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain's head, Revolving in his mind some subtle feat Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might Devise in the lone season of dun night. 12. Lo! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has Driven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, Where the immortal oxen of the God Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows, And safely stalled in a remote abode.— The archer Argicide, elate and proud, Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. 13. He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way, But, being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with withy twigs. 14. And on his feet he tied these sandals light, The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight, Like a man hastening on some distant way, He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight; But an old man perceived the infant pass Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass. 15. The old man stood dressing his sunny vine: 'Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder! You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine Methinks even you must grow a little older: Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder— Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and— If you have understanding—understand.' 16. So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed; Till the black night divine, which favouring fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to climb. 17. Now to Alpheus he had driven all The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun; They came unwearied to the lofty stall And to the water-troughs which ever run Through the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall, Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one Had pastured been, the great God made them move Towards the stall in a collected drove. 18. A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, And having soon conceived the mystery Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped And the divine child saw delightedly.— Mercury first found out for human weal Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel. 19. And fine dry logs and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon the ground— And kindled them—and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around: And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud, Close to the fire—such might was in the God. 20. And on the earth upon their backs he threw The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er, And bored their lives out. Without more ado He cut up fat and flesh, and down before The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two, Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Helen was bewildered to find herself surrounded by air as warm as the breath of summer. Slowly she walked into a large gallery, constructed of thousands of flashing, glittering glass panes in a network of wrought-iron ribs. It was a glasshouse, she realized in bewilderment. On a rooftop. The ethereal construction, as pretty as a wedding cake, had been built on a sturdy brickwork base, with iron pillars and girders welded to vertical struts and diagonal tiers. "This is for my orchids," she said faintly. Rhys came up behind her, his hands settling at her waist. He nuzzled gently at her ear. "I told you I'd find a place for them." A glass palace in the sky. It was magical, an inspired stroke of romantic imagination, and he had built it for her. Dazzled, she took in the view of London at sunset, a red glow westering across the leaden sky. The clouds were torn in places, gold light spilling through the fire-colored fleece.
Lisa Kleypas (Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels, #2))
The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.
Ella Griffin (The Flower Arrangement)
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41: 10 NIV Nadin Khoury was thirteen years old, five foot two, and weighed, soaking wet, probably a hundred pounds. His attackers were larger and outnumbered him seven to one. For thirty minutes they hit, kicked, and beat him. He never stood a chance. They dragged him through the snow, stuffed him into a tree, and suspended him on a seven-foot wrought-iron fence. Khoury survived the attack and would have likely faced a few more except for the folly of one of the bullies. He filmed the pile-on and posted it on YouTube. The troublemakers landed in jail, and the story reached the papers. A staffer at the nationwide morning show The View read the account and invited Khoury to appear on the broadcast. As the video of the assault played, his lower lip quivered. As the video ended, the curtain opened, and three huge men walked out, members of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. Khoury, a rabid fan, turned and smiled. One was All-Pro receiver DeSean Jackson. Jackson took a seat close to the boy and promised him, “Anytime you need us, I got two linemen right here.” Then, in full view of every bully in America, he gave the boy his cell phone number. 16 Who wouldn’t want that type of protection? You’ve got it . . . from the Son of God himself.
Max Lucado (God Is With You Every Day: 365-Day Devotional)
I, Prayer (A Poem of Magnitudes and Vectors) I, Prayer, know no hour. No season, no day, no month nor year. No boundary, no barrier or limitation–no blockade hinders Me. There is no border or wall I cannot breach. I move inexorably forward; distance holds Me not. I span the cosmos in the twinkling of an eye. I knowest it all. I am the most powerful force in the Universe. Who then is My equal? Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Surely, I may’st with but a Word. Who then is able to stand before Me? I am the wind, the earth, the metal. I am the very empyrean vault of Heaven Herself. I span the known and the unknown beyond Eternity’s farthest of edges. And whatsoever under Her wings is Mine. I am a gentle stream, a fiery wrath penetrating; wearing down mountains –the hardest and softest of substances. I am a trickling brook to fools of want lost in the deserts of their own desires. I am a Niagara to those who drink in well. I seep through cracks. I inundate. I level forests kindleth unto a single burning bush. My hand moves the Universe by the mind of a child. I withhold treasures solid from the secret stores to they who would wrench at nothing. I do not sleep or eat, feel not fatigue, nor hunger. I do not feel the cold, nor rain or wind. I transcend the heat of the summer’s day. I commune. I petition. I intercede. My time is impeccable, by it worlds and destinies turn. I direct the fates of nations and humankind. My Words are Iron eternaled—rust not they away. No castle keep, nor towers of beaten brass, Nor the dankest of dungeon helks, Nor adamantine links of hand-wrought steel Can contain My Spirit–I shan’t turn back. The race is ne’er to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor wisdom to the wise or wealth to the rich. For skills and wisdom, I give to the sons of man. I take wisdom and skills from the sons of man for they are ever Mine. Blessed is the one who finds it so, for in humility comes honor, For those who have fallen on the battlefield for My Name’s sake, I reach down to lift them up from On High. I am a rose with the thorn. I am the clawing Lion that pads her children. My kisses wound those whom I Love. My kisses are faithful. No occasion, moment in time, instances, epochs, ages or eras hold Me back. Time–past, present and future is to Me irrelevant. I span the millennia. I am the ever-present Now. My foolishness is wiser than man’s My weakness stronger than man’s. I am subtle to the point of formlessness yet formed. I have no discernible shape, no place into which the enemy may sink their claws. I AM wisdom and in length of days knowledge. Strength is Mine and counsel, and understanding. I break. I build. By Me, kings rise and fall. The weak are given strength; wisdom to those who seek and foolishness to both fooler and fool alike. I lead the crafty through their deceit. I set straight paths for those who will walk them. I am He who gives speech and sight - and confounds and removes them. When I cut, straight and true is my cut. I strike without fault. I am the razored edge of high destiny. I have no enemy, nor friend. My Zeal and Love and Mercy will not relent to track you down until you are spent– even unto the uttermost parts of the earth. I cull the proud and the weak out of the common herd. I hunt them in battles royale until their cries unto Heaven are heard. I break hearts–those whose are harder than granite. Beyond their atomic cores, I strike their atomic clock. Elect motions; not one more or less electron beyond electron’s orbit that has been ordained for you do I give–for His grace is sufficient for thee until He desires enough. Then I, Prayer, move on as a comet, Striking out of the black. I, His sword, kills to give Life. I am Living and Active, the Divider asunder of thoughts and intents. I Am the Light of Eternal Mind. And I, Prayer, AM Prayer Almighty.
Douglas M. Laurent
Indeed, the manufacture of iron had come into common use in Britain as early as the eighth century BC. It was discovered that heating iron-bearing ore to a high temperature with the use of charcoal, fanned by a draught of air, creates a solid lump of metal (a 'bloom'). When re-heated, the metal can be hammered into a shape. This is 'wrought iron'. If additional carbon is added to the ore, the melting temperature is reduced, which allows liquid iron ore to be poured into a mould. This is 'cast iron'. In the course of the fifteenth century, a furnace was developed which used blasts of heated and compressed air to drive up the temperature. This is a 'blast furnace'. The molten iron is run off into moulds consisting of a main channel connected to a number of shorter channels at right angles. As this resembles a sow suckling her pigs, the cast iron which results is known as 'pig iron'.
Timothy C.W. Blanning (The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815)
While iron oxide makes up over 6% of the Earth’s crust, it took a long time for mankind to figure out how to convert dirt into something as useful as steel. The first smelting of iron from ore was probably accidental when some iron-bearing ore was mixed in with the copper ore during the smelting of copper. Iron ore is composed mostly of various iron oxides which need to be reduced – have oxygen removed – to form metallic iron. The iron ore was mixed with charcoal, which is mostly carbon, and fired. The carbon dioxide produced by burning charcoal combines with the hot carbon in the charcoal, forming carbon monoxide. The hot carbon monoxide turns again to carbon dioxide by stealing oxygen from – reducing – the iron oxides, leaving metallic iron behind. But the heat needed for melting copper isn’t nearly sufficient to melt the iron that may be present in the copper ore. The reaction from ore to iron occurs while in a solid state when the iron forms into a solid, ugly mass of spongy metal called a bloom. The bloom’s cavities were full of slag (molten impurities from the smelting) that needed to be removed. Someone must have recognized the spongy mass as a metallic substance, probably by using appropriate scientific methodology such as hitting it with a rock. Eventually, the bloom was processed by heating it to the slag’s melting point and hammering on it until all of the slag had squirted out. This would be hard, dangerous and resource-intensive work as the iron was reheated and beaten over and over to produce wrought iron. This process was the way iron was made from late B.C. to early A.D.
Anonymous
Lose yourself in the city’s rickety streets, blind canals, wrought-iron gates, uninhabited courtyards—may I go on? Why, thank you—leery Gothic carapaces, Ararat roofs, shrubbery-tufted brick spires, medieval overhangs, laundry sagging from windows, cobbled whirlpools that suck your eye in, clockwork princes and chipped princesses striking their hours, sooty doves, and three or four octaves of bells, some sober, some bright.
Anonymous
Sere grass grew in tufts out of a pale, sandy soil, no richer for the thousands of souls planted there. Red-brown moss clumped amidst blankets of lichens of pale lavender-gray. Dark, twisted shrubs prickled rising above a knobby hillock, sharp, tiny leaves turning bronze or bright red and yellow with the advancing autumn. A wrought-iron gate guarded deep shadow inside a crypt, illustrated the silence of the grave, he thought.
Antonio Dias
All the rival presidential candidates called themselves Republicans, and each claimed to be the logical successor to the Jeffersonian heritage. Ironically, what the campaign produced was the breakup of the party and the traditions everyone honored. One-party government proved an evanescent phase in American history.
Daniel Walker Howe (What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848)
The taxi stopped in front of the tall wrought-iron gates that must have dated back to Elizabethan times.
Corina Bomann (The Moonlit Garden)
Mom covers the wrought-iron patio table with newspaper, and Dad dumps the steaming crawfish
Greg Iles (The Quiet Game (Penn Cage, #1))
the simplest, least adorned space within the crypt or indeed the entire church. A raised white marble platform, ankle-high, on which lies a slab of gray granite with a surround of rose-colored marble. The granite is engraved with Gaudí’s epitaph. The slab lies perpendicular to a wall of large limestone blocks. On each side of the wall are two similar walls joined at oblique angles, drawing the eye to the grave. Low to the ground is a ribbonlike surround of wrought iron rails designed to hold votive candles, now bare. Instead, a single row of red candles burn brightly at the foot of the tomb. Above it, on a small pedestal, is a graceful statue of the Virgin Mary, holding the infant Jesus. Against the limestone walls, four pedestaled columns rise to the apex of the crypt, framing three tall arches that poke into the apse above.
Glenn Cooper (The Resurrection Maker)
Raised in privilege, Robert Moses was always cushioned from real life; from the age of nine, he slept in a custom-made bed and was served dinner prepared by the family’s cook on fine china. As Parks Commissioner, he swindled Long Island farmers and homeowners out of their land to build his parkways—essentially cattle chutes that skirted the properties of the rich, allowing those well-off enough to own a car to get to beaches disfigured by vast parking lots. He cut the city off from its waterfront with expressways built to the river’s edge, and the parks he built were covered with concrete rather than grass, leaving the city grayer, not greener, than it had been before. The ambient racism of the time hardly excuses his shocking contempt for minorities: of the 255 new playgrounds he built in the 1930s, only one was in Harlem. (Physically separated from the city by wrought-iron monkeys.) In the decade after the Second World War, he caused 320,000 people to be evicted from their homes; his cheap, sterile projects became vertical ghettos that fomented civic decay for decades. If some of his more insane schemes had been realized—a highway through the sixth floor of the Empire State Building, the Lower Manhattan Expressway through today’s SoHo, the Battery Bridge whose approaches would have eliminated Castle Clinton and Battery Park—New York as we know it would be nearly uninhabitable. There is a name for what Robert Moses was engaged in: class warfare, waged not with armored vehicles and napalm, but with bulldozers and concrete.
Taras Grescoe
It was at this bleak moment that Tom Sancton wandered through the French Quarter one evening and passed by the open wrought-iron gate of 726 St. Peter Street.
Tom Sancton (Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White)
The black wrought iron fence caught my attention. There are supernatural teachings that state that wrought iron is reputed to hold spirits inside the area where the fence is built. Ghosts need energy to manifest, and iron, as a conductor of electricity, will ground the ghost when it comes into contact with the iron. Wrought iron fences around cemeteries were used in this capacity: they worked as a barrier to keep unwanted spirits beyond the fence and also to contain spirits that reside inside the fenced area.
Kala Ambrose (Ghosthunting North Carolina (America's Haunted Road Trip))
Here he met Judith Tholon, the woman who was to become the love of his life, but who was married to the keeper of the cemetery. [...] After closing the heavy wrought-iron gates at night, they would wander together amidst the graves under the moonlight.
Richard Parry (The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists)
He sat in class next to Graham Martin, who was a white boy and lived in the next street to the Corams. The classroom smelled of chalkdust and children and the sour ink that was brought around in earthenware bottles. It was a different smell from the smell that school had had before he went away, when he had been in First Bubs. In First Bubs the smell had been of biscuits and oranges for play lunch, mouldering bean-bags and paint-boxes and crayons. The desks had been different too, with green cloth bags on the backs of the seats for putting things in. The desks were wrought-iron and shiny wood, carved with people's names.
Randolph Stow (The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea)
million men had been called up for military service; there was rationing of butter, sugar and bacon, and wrought-iron railings everywhere were being cut down for scrap metal for the war effort, before Sergeant Pilot Thomas Roxham was allowed
David Wiltshire (Enduring Passions)
He, Cromwell, touches a finger to the metal. You would not guess it to look at him now, but his father was a blacksmith; he has affinity with iron, steel, with everything that is mined from the earth or forged, everything that is made molten, or wrought, or given a cutting edge. The executioner’s blade is incised with Christ’s crown of thorns, and with the words of a prayer.
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
He stopped our walk to peer inside a splendid white, wrought-iron gate with gold spokes, through which we could glimpse a building that looked like Buckingham Palace in London. The grounds were lush and parklike, surrounded by trees. Kenji said, "Tōgū Palace is through those gates. It's a state guesthouse now. You can't see it from here, but the crown prince and his family live on the grounds farther back behind the palace." "Can we take a tour here sometime?" "It's only open for visitors on New Year's Day and the emperor's birthday. The Imperial Palace, closer to where we live, has more access for tourists. It's even got a moat surrounding it. Beautiful gardens year-round but especially in spring when the cherry blossoms bloom.
Rachel Cohn (My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life)
Friday night, under the dim atrium lights, we sit on wrought iron chairs, drinking beer in the cool antiseptic air. Near the fake flagstones snaking through the fake trees, ferns, and the bubbling, chlorine-infused, somnolent brook. Anytown USA. A fake park superimposed on the Washington swamp. Outside, oversized windows overlook the city, streaked with: rain, humidity, and tears.
Gary J. Floyd
APTRONYM. American columnist and wit Franklin P. Adams (1881–1960), well known by his initials F. P. A., coined this word for a name that sounds like its owner’s occupation; for instance, William Rumhole, who was a London tavern owner. In Noah Jonathan Jacobs’s Naming-Day in Eden we are told of a Russian ballerina named Olga Tumbelova. Gene Weingarten, a writer for the Washington Post, has coined inaptronym for a name that is ironic as opposed to appropriate, e.g., the late Cardinal Sin—Jaime Lachica Sin, the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Manila.
Paul Dickson (Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers)
Then, at last, Madeleine’s luck turned. She came across Montmartre. With its windmills, its clear air and the old-fashioned, village feel of its higgledy-piggledy houses perched on a slope, few places recalled the Limousin countryside so vividly as Montmartre. It was up to 129 metres above sea level at the highest point. Why, with its narrow, winding streets and alleys, and its cottages clinging to the hillside, a person could have believed themselves in Le Mas Barbu. The bustling Rue Lepic and the Place des Abbesses readily called to mind Bessines’ town square on a busy market day. And all around, steep, grassy banks rose up protectively, hillside homes bloomed with flowers, old men installed in wrought iron chairs sat outside doorways and set the world to rights, children played in the street and women chatted and gossiped as they made their way to fill baskets with provisions. At last, Madeleine had found somewhere familiar, reassuring, comforting. Montmartre felt like home.
Catherine Hewitt (Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon)
Early gas pipelines in Pennsylvania were cast iron, screwed together and caulked. Wrought iron replaced cast iron in the last decade of the century. 19 But natural gas was far cheaper than coal and its heat more uniform, qualities which made it desirable for process heating in Pittsburgh’s many glass factories and steel mills. The Great Western Iron Company was the first in the Pittsburgh area to use natural gas, around 1870.20 Many other manufacturers followed. By 1885, Pittsburgh had acquired about five hundred miles of natural-gas pipelines. 21
Richard Rhodes (Energy: A Human History)
When he was alone, he consoled himself with the dream of the infinite rooms. He dreamed that he was getting out of bed, opening the door and going into an identical room with the same bed with a wrought-iron head, the same wicker chair, and the same small picture on the back wall. From that room he would go into another that was just the same, the door of which would open into another that was just the same, the door of which would open into another one just the same, and then into another exactly alike, and so on to infinity. He liked to go from room to room, as in a gallery of parallel mirrors, until another would touch him on the shoulder. Then he would go back from room to room, walking in reverse, going back over his trail, and he would find the room of reality. But one night, two weeks after they took him to his bed, another touched his shoulder in an intermediate room and he stayed there forever, thinking that it was the real room.
Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Light. I took to watching it on the spring trees, noticing how it turned the delicate new leaves translucent. I observed the way it threw shadows against walls; tossed stardust across the surface of the water; made filigree on the ground where it fell through wrought-iron railings. I wanted to touch it, this marvelous tool. To hold it in my fingertips the way I did the tiny objects on my father's workbench.
Kate Morton (The Clockmaker's Daughter)
For years, we knew the double-storey at the bottom of Albermarle Street as the Gandhi House. In the decade before the Great War, we'd been told, Gandhi lived here with his family. Now the house has lost its claim on history 9but not its plaque from the National Monuments Council). An enterprising researcher, with nothing to gain by his unmasking except the truth, has shown that Gandhi did not live here after all, but up the road at No. 11. One of Gandhi's descendants, who visited the house as a child, has provided confirmation. The people at No. 11 should have that plaque moved to their wall. Both the Gandhi Houses, the true and the false, are double-storeys set on a promontory between two thoroughfares, but the attitudes of the streets could not differ more. Hillier and Albermarle Streets approach the impostor rather Kindly, cupping it in leafy palms, whereas Albermarle and Johannes grip the genuine article like an egg in a nutcracker. No. 11 has a handsome corrugated-iron roof and a wide, shady balcony. I recall an orante wrought-iron finial, the ECG of a Victorian heartbeat, dancing along the roof ridge, but it must have been removed by the renovators. I cannot remember ever seeing a person on the balcony, perfectly suited though it is to reading the paper or chatting over sundowners, but for a few years there were shop-window mannequins leaning on the parapet. Perhaps they were scarecrows for thieves? At night, with the lighted windows behind them, they always deceived the eye. Something in the atmosphere, a bit of lace around the neck, a reddish tinge of the light from the doorway, made them look like whores. Apparently, the Mahatma used to take his rest on the balcony on summer nights. It is easy to picture him there with sleep in his eyes, buffing his little round glasses on the hem of a bed sheet.
Ivan Vladislavić (Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked)
Wrought iron began to replace cast iron before 1820, when a Northumberland railway engineer named John Birkinshaw patented a method of rolling wrought iron rails in various shapes in fifteen-foot lengths that could withstand the weight of steam locomotives pounding and running over them.
Richard Rhodes (Energy: A Human History)
Langrage was basically shards of cast or wrought iron, jagged-edged, parcelled up much like chain, used in the smaller bore cannon where chain was impractical; it had become much less popular in recent years, probably as much through fashion as logical argument.
Andrew Wareham (The Bitter Land (Duty and Destiny #2))
But who could yearn to be on the wrong end of the knife and fork? That’s his real interest here. They’re out there…and dear god, he finds them. “I’ve always lost myself in other people,” says a nervous young woman in an empty room with peeling windowsills. “It’s never enough. Why not carry it all the way?” A middle-aged man on a park bench leers into the camera, something lascivious in his gaze, as if he’s filming for a dating profile. He squeezes his thigh. “I’m thick. I’m meaty. Juicy. Who wouldn’t want me?” A couple, too. The man looks smaller than the Amazonian woman to begin with, the contrast exaggerated by the way he hunches on the floor beside her wrought iron chair. He strokes the leather of her knee-high boots. She stokes his hair the way she would a favored pet. “I want to be in her belly,” he whispers. “I want to pass through her. I want to become a part of her. Then neither of us will ever have to be lonely again.
Ellen Datlow (Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles)