# Seashells

A seashell, also known as a sea shell, or simply as a shell, is the common name for a hard, protective outer layer, a shell (or in some cases a "test") that was created by a sea creature, a marine organism. The shell is part of the body of a marine animal. In most cases a shell is an exoskeleton, usually that of an animal without a backbone, an invertebrate.

## Quotes

* ... seashells were jewelry before gems, and they were money before coins.
** Cynthia Barnett, (April 27, 2022)"Sea Secrets 2022 with Cynthia Barnett". MiamiRosenstielSchool, YouTube. (quote at 9:20 of 1:07:00)
* I have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen it.
** Steven Wright, I Have a Pony (1985), track 09; reported in Frank Forencich, Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement (2006), p. 239.
* She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore; The shells she sells are sea-shells I'm sure.
** Classic English tongue twister, reported in Hamilton Wright Mabie, Boys' and Girls' Bookshelf (1912), p. 34.
* One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
** Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955), p. 114.
* I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
** Isaac Newton, reported in Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855), Volume II. Ch. 27.
* But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
** Walter Savage Landor, Gebir (1798), Book i.

### Listening to seashells

* Gather a shell from the strewn beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech.
** Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Sea-Limits, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* I send thee a shell from the ocean-beach; But listen thou well, for my shell hath speech. Hold to thine ear And plain thou'lt hear Tales of ships.
** Charles Henry Webb, With a Nantucket Shell, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood. We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near.
** Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Sonnet. Sea-shell Murmurs, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.
** William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 1132.
* Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital.
** Walter Savage Landor, Letter to John Forster, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harboring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, rewarding in melodious guile fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And dies a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sin, then, for this is also sooth.
** William Butler Yeats, "The Song of the Happy Shepherd".