Within the oyster's shell uncouth
The purest pearl may hide,
Trust me you'll find a heart of truth
Within that rough outside. [ Mrs. Osgood ]

Better half an egg than an empty shell. [ Proverb ]

Let every snail like her own shell best. [ Proverb ]

A friendless heart is like a hollow shell,
That sighs o'er its own emptiness. [ Thomas Hood ]

If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell.
And may be found too in an oyster shell. [ Bunyan ]

You may truss up all his wit in an egg-shell. [ Proverb ]

He that will have the kernel must crack the shell. [ Proverb ]

He swallows the egg and gives away the shell in alms. [ German Proverb ]

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last.
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

It is as hard a thing as to sail over the sea in an egg-shell. [ Proverb ]

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. [ Landor ]

Music was a thing of the soul; a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea; a strange bird singing the songs of another shore. [ J. G. Holland ]

Out of a horrible depth the height steps boldly forth; out of a hard shell virtue fights its way to the light; pain is the birth (medium) of the higher natures. [ Tiedge ]

When thou forgivest, - the man who has pierced thy heart stands to thee in the relation of the sea-worm that perforates the shell of the mussel which straightway closes the wound with a pearl. [ Richter ]

If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns. [ Chapin ]

There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless soul, like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! [ Chapin ]

Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a 'shell' if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must be understood that it is not the mere shell that we admire; we are attracted by the idea that this shell is only a beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering. [ Jane Porter ]

Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of the spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. [ Channing ]