But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis19:26.

And the L went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDExodus13:21.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

-Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich
  Quoted in the Observer, 29 Dec.

She came to the village church, And sat by a pillar alone; An angel watching an urn Wept over her, carved in stone.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.8, l.301^4.

The throat: how strange, that there is not more erotic emphasis upon it. For here, through this compound pulsing pillar, our life makes its leap into spirit, and in the other direction gulps down what it needs of the material world.

-Updike,John Hoyer
  Self-Consciousness, III.'GettingTheWords Out'.