True emeralds are very strong stones, and brittle emeralds should not be purchased.
Cannons fired stone cannonballs, which did relatively little damage to stronger stone walls, and so were primarily used in defence of fortifications rather than as an offensive weapon by besiegers.
In the days before monetary union, German business time and again sharpened its blade on the hard stone of a strong D-mark: to get France and Italy, in particular, out of trouble, devaluations of the franc and lira were dressed up as revaluations of the D-mark.
I must become as strong as stone".
As bricks and mortar are not as strong as stone, the walls had to be thicker although the pillars needed to support the vaulted ceiling of the chancel were made of limestone (although those in the nave are of brick).
Nothing puzzles archaeologists so much as impracticality, and although the karst topography of Baalbek demands strong foundation stones, and although one big stone is easier to move than many smaller stones, the pillars holding up the temple's podium, van Ess says, are bigger than they need to be.
During the Industrial Revolution the timber and masonry tradition was eclipsed by the use of iron, which was stronger than stone and usually less costly.
In the poem, Calamandrei stated that if Kesselring returned he would indeed find a monument, but one stronger than stone, composed of Italian Resistance fighters who "willingly took up arms, to preserve dignity, not to promote hate, and who decided to fight back against the shame and terror of the world".
Steel was strong but heavy, stone hard but brittle.
