As nonhuman animals, plants, and even 'inanimate' rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “inert” letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless - as mysterious as a talking stone.
Yes, it's rather funny, really, that next to no-one realized the snake that Harry set free in Philosopher's Stone turned out to be Voldemort's final Horcrux, Nagini.
My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they've got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the stone age.
In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, Snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.
Failure is a stepping stone to success.
The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.
When Rolling Stone handed me this crazy assignment to be in the studio with James Brown, they had the misapprehension that I'd written for them already just because I claimed my character had.
Like a stone thrown into a pond, a good deed can create ripples that extend far beyond the initial splash.
If a piece of worthless stone can bruise a cup of gold, its worth is not increased, nor that of the gold diminished.