What are piles?

Famous quotes containing the word piles:

“Immortal glories in my mind revive,
And in my soul a thousand passions strive,
When Rome’s exalted beauties I descry
Magnificent in piles of ruin lie.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)

“I happened to find
Your picture. That picture. I stopped there cold,
Like a man raking piles of dead leaves in his yard
Who has turned up a severed hand.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)