Being Sand Quotes & Sayings

Henry liked to put to himself when he was a schoolboy: what are the chances of this particular fish, from that shoal, off that continental shelf ending up in the pages of this copy of the Daily Mirror? Something just short of infinity to one. Similarly, the grains of sand on a beach, arranged just so. The random ordering of the world, the unimaginable odds against any particular condition, still please him. Even as a child, and especially after Aberfan, he never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures; the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy god. — Ian McEwan

Using time, pressure and patience, the universe gradually changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds. You're being worked on too, so hang in there. Just because something isn't apparent right now, doesn't mean it isn't happening. It's not until the end do you realize, sometimes your biggest blessings were disguised by pain and suffering. They were not placed there to break you, but to make you. — John Geiger

No human being can control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood. — George Sand

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive. — Ariel Pink

I never really liked weightlifting because there is no problem solving, whereas when I am fighting, I am trying to solve a problem, so I don't think about being tired. I box, wrestle, do jujitsu, run up sand dunes; every single day is something different so that I am mentally engaged. That's what makes me want to train longer. — Ronda Rousey

Each day, we feel more distant from each other, more alone, all while being surrounded by millions. Each day we watch as our city turns into a desert, one in which we are all lost, looking for that oasis we like to call "love". The more we wait, the more everything and everyone looks like a grain of sand escaping between our fingers before vanishing into the wind. How do we find something or someone we can no longer see, but which is right there before us? And how do we hold on to what is most precious in life? — Gabriel Ba

So the real experience, beyond the dream world, is the
beauty and color and excitement of the real experience of
now in everyday life. When we face things as they are, we
give up the hope of something better. There will be no magic,
because we cannot tell ourselves to get out of our depression.
Depression and ignorance, the emotions, whatever we experi-
ence, are all real and contain tremendous truth. If we really
want to learn and see the experience of truth, we have to be
where we are. The whole thing is just a matter of being a grain
of sand. — Chogyam Trungpa

Eternity is not a long time; rather, it is another dimension. It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind. — Joseph Campbell

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. XXX — Rabindranath Tagore

I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity. — George Sand

Who can calculate the trajectory of a molecule? How do we know the creation of worlds is not determined by the falling of grains of sand? Who, after all, knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely big and the infinitely small, the reverberation of causes in the chasms of a being, the avalanches of creation? A — Victor Hugo

Everybody needs to go to Mongolia just to see what it is to be a human being again. — Milla Jovovich

The apparent physical stability of reefs belies an underlying natural turmoil of growth, death and destruction of calcareous organisms. Much like a modern city, reefs are constantly being rebuilt and torn down at the same time. Corals are the bricks, broken pieces of plant and animal skeletons the sand, and algal crusts and chemical cements the mortar. Reef growth is determined by the production, accumulation, and cementation of all this calcareous stuff into solid limestone. — Jeremy Jackson

How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played! Whence do men draw this passion for eternity, flung by chance as they are upon a scarcely cooled bed of lava, threatened by the beginning by the deserts that are to be, under the constant menace of the snows? Their civilizations are but fragile gildings: a volcano can blot them out, a new sea, a sand-storm. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I wonder if it hurts, being carved out like this, one grain of sand at a time. I wonder if the rocks realize that for every part of themselves they lose, they gain something beautiful — Elissa Janine Hoole

It was so long ago now that the job felt like part of her soul. Like being a teacher or an artist who made things out of sand. You never really saw the results. You just trusted that you knew what you were doing and that everything would work out okay in the end. — Emma Straub

Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow. — Cecelia Ahern

It was all a part of being trustworthy - of being a piece of sea glass. High tides, low tides, storms, sand and mistakes all contributed to the polishing process. Though difficult to endure at the time, the demanding elements helped smooth the surface, transforming one into a better person, not worse. A person who learned from the harsh environment, who knew the storm would end, and who felt confident she would still be in one piece. — Maria V. Snyder

When i was a kid we took a trip to the beach, and I just remember being annoyed by the smell of sunscreen, the squawk of seagulls, and the way that the sand would cling on to my wet feet. Then of course, if I tried to wash them off in the ocean, they would just get wetter and the sand would cling more. Talk about a no-win situation. — Alicia Thompson

My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana, and he remembered riding his horse across the prairie and seeing some large bones sticking out of the ground. He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones. — Jack Horner

You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die. — Nicholas Carr

It takes time to see the desert; you have to keep looking at it. When you've looked long neough, you realise the blank wastes of sand and rock are teemming with life. Just as you can keep looking at a person and suddenly realise that the way you see them has completely changed: from being a stranger, they've gradually revealed themselves as someone with a wealth of complexities and surprising subtleties that you're growing to love. — Annie Caulfield

Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet ... It is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species. — Michael Greger

I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding evidence of myself there, after being told my footprints did not exist on that sand. I think the work of the great white writers is important, but I think it's most important when it's negotiating me and my people, because I am as arrogant and selfish a reader as any other. — Mat Johnson

Ten feet to my left, Sadie smacked a vulture with her staff. The bird exploded into white sand. Annabeth jogged toward us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I'm going to murder you. Carter, being invisible, was nowhere to be seen. — Rick Riordan

I am sure that I am in possession of a soul that is at the very least, a thousand years old. And I say this not on a whim; I say this as someone who is sure of something, who is not thinking fancifully but who is thinking solidly and fully. So why is it that I am childlike and playful? There is only one answer to this, and that is, after existing for a very long time, one learns the skill of retaining childlikeness and the state of childlikeness, which is called playfulness. The immature are not childlike and they are not playful; rather, they are manipulative and insecure. Manipulation is the game of the immature and insecurity is their state of being. I'm saying this because I want to draw the great distinction in the sand very clearly. The older your soul becomes, the more childlike it will be in texture. But we only make playtime out of small and joyful things; there is no playtime when it comes to bravery, honesty, and trust. — C. JoyBell C.

After a break-up people always claim that things will get better, and in fact they do. ( but not because we in fact ARE better but that the pain, has beaten every last ounce of feeling from us. after we are wasted away, because food and drink seems to be like sand being choked down, and sleep is no comfort because you know you'll dream of them, and have to wake with knowing they'll not be there. after all this is accepted, we are what people claim is 'better'. — Gabriel Macht

I believe that there are no innate, intrinsic differences among a human being , a baboon or a grain of sand. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this. Or time would vanish. We would need no personal names of the old sort in the sidereal future, nothing being fixed. We would be designated by other nouns. Days and nights would belong to the museums. The earth a memorial park, a merry-go-round cemetery. The seas powdering our bones like quartz, making sand, grinding our peace for us by the aeon. Well, that would be good - a melancholy good. — Saul Bellow

She was tired of being afraid, so impossibly weary of her own fears that a part of her wanted to sit on the quite beach forever. If she sat in the sand forever,she wouldn't have to face the troubles that often seemed to define her life. As a tear descended her cheek, she wiped it away, turning toward the sea. — John Shors

I'd never seen a grown man cry like that before, so unself-consciously, so unashamedly. I didn't know if he was crying for what he'd lost, or for what he'd never had, but there was a beauty in his tears that moved me more than I could ever explain with words - a beauty in the honesty of his sadness, in the grace of it's purity. It was holy water raining down from the clouds in his eyes, falling to the sand then being carried back to the source from which it came - his blessed sea. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

Sand did not suddenly come into being because we had need for glass and silicone. Neither did wild flowers suddenly spring up because a bunch of environmentalists in Texas wanted alternative ways of helping the world without dumping more chemicals into it - these things were already there. — Stephen Richards

I've always been an incredibly physically capable human being. I've always had good control of my body, walk a hundred feet on my hands, jump off rock wall and do a back flip into the sand. That's always been who I am. — Casey Neistat

A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain — Marcel Proust

Being smart in the arts is the same as being smart in engineering is the same as being smart in writing is the same as being smart in anything, really. It's the ability to manipulate all the pieces of the puzzle in your mind, try to fit them together, and when they don't fit quite right ... you sand the edges/corners and make them all fit. — Gerald Jay Sussman

Wanting to give her the best fit I could, I sand the knowledge I had learned from Snow Flower. Everyone needs clothing-no matter how cool it is in summer or how warm it is in winter-so make clothes for others without being asked. Even if the table is plentiful, let your in-laws eat first. Work hard and remember three things: Be god to your in-laws and always show respect, be good to your husband and always weave for him, be good to your children and always be a model of decorum to them. If you do these things, your new family will treat you kindly. In that fine home, be calm of heart. — Lisa See

Being in a relationship with some people is like pushing a boat through sand. I used to have the time and energy for that kind of nonsense, but not anymore. Relationships should be a wonderful journey of exploration and love; not grinding resistance. — Steve Maraboli

Whatever god he adores, or even if he rejects all the gods, the man who desires to create cannot express himself if he does not feel in his veins the flow of all the rivers- even those which carry along sand and putrefaction, he is not realizing his entire being if he does not see the light of all the constellations, even those which no longer shine, if the primeval fire, even when locked beneath the crust of the earth, does not consume his nerves, if the hearts of all men, even the dead, even those still to be born, do not beat in his heart, if abstraction does not mount from his senses to his soul to raise it to the plane of the laws which cause men to act, the rivers to flow, the fire to burn, and the constellations to revolve. — Elie Faure

I see that I am inwardly fashioned for faith and not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear and doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry my being is gasping for breath - these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence I breath freely - these are my native air. — E. Stanley Jones

It isn't a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in. — Lauren DeStefano

What Ireland shares with many societies around the world is a dangerous reality: once a group of people is isolated as being in some way inferior, the general population becomes less concerned with how they are treated, even in the face of evidence of cruelty and abuse. In Ireland's case, the thousands of victims of industrial schools bear witness to a society unwilling to question its own comfortable certainties out of a fear that those beliefs might turn out to have been built on sand. — Mary Raftery

Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping. — Anais Nin

Joshie has always told Post Human Services Staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were because every moment, our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day, we transfer into a different person, an utterly unfaithful iteration of our original selves, of the drooling kid in the sandbox. But not me. I am still a facsimile of my early childhood. I am still looking for a loving dad to lift me up and brush the sand off my ass and to hear English, calm and hurtless, fall off his lips. — Gary Shteyngart

We must love stupid people better than ourselves; are they not the really unfortunate ones of this world? Do not people without taste and without ideal grow constantly weary, rejoicing in nothing, and being quite useless here below? — George Sand

I should be getting back to the bonfire. They're going to think I've been kidnapped." He pulled me toward him in one quick motion.

"Kidnapped insinuates some sort of struggle." He said in a low voice with a sexy grin. "You'd enjoy being captured by me." My heart jumped in my throat, but I tried to remain cool.

"I'd like to see you try," I threw back at him, "but first you'll have to escape your own sandy death trap" I wiggled my feet out of the sand, stood up and washed my hands off in the water. He followed my every move with curious eyes.

"Sweet dreams, Anastasia." I wasn't sure if there was an underlying meaning to his words. "Sweet dreams, Finn," I responded, breathlessly. — Kristen Day

In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand. — Henry David Thoreau

Living for oneself is a bad thing. The keenest intellectual pleasure comes from being able to return to the self after being absent from it for a spell. But living all the time inside the self, that most tyrannical, demanding and capricious of companions - no, one shouldn't do it. — George Sand

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. — Rabindranath Tagore

A little tap on the window pane, as though something had struck it, followed by a plentiful light falling sound, as of grains of sand being sprinkled from a window overhead, gradually spreading, intensifying, acquiring a regular rhythm, becoming fluid, sonorous, musical, immeasurable, universal: it was the rain. — Marcel Proust

I'd heard once in school that if a single bird were to transport all the sand, grain by grain, from the eastern seabord to the west coast of Africa, it would take ... I didn't catch the number of years, preferring to concentrate on the single bird chosen to perform this thankless task. It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work. Birds search for grubs and build their nests, but their leisure time is theirs to spend as they see fit. I pictured this bird looking down from the branches to say, "You want me to do what?" before flying off, laughing at the at the foolish story he now had to tell his friends. — David Sedaris

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I. — Elizabeth Berg

It was easy to blame people for the misery of life rather than blaming the sand. Yelling at the sand got you nowhere. People yelled back, and at least that was a response. An acknowledgment. Being tormented and simultaneously ignored was the worst. — Hugh Howey

The wind blustered in from the sea, setting the horses' manes streaming sideways, and the gulls wheeled mewing against the blue-and-grey tumble of the sky; and Aquila, riding a little aside from the rest as usual, caught for a moment from the wind and the gulls and the wet sand and the living, leaping power of the young red mare under him, something of the joy of simply being alive that he had taken for granted in the old days. — Rosemary Sutcliff

I would sit on the beach, as waves crashed and retreated over the sparkling sand like lost dreams. All those oblivious molecules, joining together, creating something of improbable wonder.

Often such sights were blurred by tears. I felt the beautiful melancholy of being human, captured perfectly in the setting of the sun. Because, as with a sunset, to be human was to be in between things - a day, bursting with desperate color as it headed irreversibly toward night. — Matt Haig

Draw a line in the sand. "I will no longer be a stumbling block for my husband." With God's help, you'll find yourself being supportive, encouraging. You become his partner rather than his opponent. This attitude of obedience unfolds blessings without end, reaching your heart, his, your children, and the watching world. — Amy Williams

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess

I wanted tolerance. I wanted everybody to leave everybody else alone, regardless of their religious beliefs, regardless of their political affiliation. I wanted people to like each other. Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God. — Donald Miller

I want to be softened, not stiff. Pliable, not rigid. I don't want anyone to look at my life and think it is perfect or, worse, that I want them to think it is perfect. Instead, I want anything that is unapproachable or harsh in me to be scrubbed away by the salt and the sand, revealing the imperfections, the brokenness, the cracks. Not because I am proud of those parts, but because I know it is real. Like the Skin Horse or the Velveteen Rabbit, I am shabby because I live life, because I am loved, and because it is all work - living and loving and being loved, being transformed, being worn and faded — Jerusalem Jackson Greer

I was meant to land wherever he settled, like the ocean washing seashells onto the shore. Jack was the shell, in constant motion and movement, being tossed around from place to place by the ebb and flow of something more powerful than he. And I was the sand, gripping and holding on to him, comforting his tumble with each push and pull of the tide, yet always constant. When I walked into the waiting — J. Sterling

He turned down the street to Emilio's, trying to remember what "the edge of chaos" meant. It was something about flipping a coin, something about the edge being the moment when the coin was in the air. The point at which the system was pure potential, about to choose a path. Or something about a pile of sand, adding sand a grain at a time, and the edge of chaos being the point at which the critical grain landed and the pile either shifted or turned into an avalanche...
...Min bit her lip and smiled at him ruefully, and without another thought, he walked across the room to her, feeling almost relieved as the avalanche began. — Jennifer Crusie

True intelligence is pure love which does not exclude or waste anything.
Not even a grain of sand is excluded or wasted. There are no exceptions in what is set free and in what is in service to this setting free.
Life, the formless, form and fragrance, knows exactly what it is doing.
Life is pure, unfiltered Intelligence flowing as whatever shape is now appearing.
It is alive and it is all calling us Home.
Do you hear the grain of sand calling your name?
It says, "Love."
Do you sense the truth of it?
If not, lean in and 'listen' again -
this time with the whole of your being. — Dhyana Stanley

Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are. — Sarah Dessen

And Will knew what it was to see his daemon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyra's fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his daemon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered the world of the dead; and the sweet rightfulness of her coming back to him at the edge of the moonlight dunes. — Philip Pullman

You can't build a life
on another human being. We're foundations
of sand. We're Atlas buckling under the sky. — Elisabeth Hewer

What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she'd disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman's ground. I said Luke wasn't a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am. I said she didn't have that problem herself anymore, since she'd decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even Steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand. We — Margaret Atwood

If you can reincarnate, what do you wanna be in your next life? I think I want to become a rock. A stone has no troubles and lives a simple life. The worst that could happen would be being stepped on, but that won't hurt. Am I right? What about you? What are you thinking? I've already thought it over for you. You'll become the wind. Because the wind is one of the world's cleanest things. Moreover, the wind can blow upon the rock, moving it. As it blows, the rock will eventually turn into sand. This way, the sand and wind can be together. Sand and wind are meant to be together. — Ah Ken

Some people describe certain physical connections as being like electricity. Sparks flying. When Chris and I touch, it's different. I think of the feel of water. The way it is when you wade into the ocean and a small wave cascades against you, swirling sand over you and awakening every pore.
Slow motion, I think decidedly. He can make things happen in slow motion. — Jessica Park

You had every right to be. He raised his eyes to look at her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn't stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind and water. — Cassandra Clare

You think God created the world?" he asks me. "Bullshit. Any kind of benevolent and righteous being would never create a fucking world like this. It's impossible. God didn't fucking create the world."
Before he walks away completely, he turns back to me one final time, pointing his finger at me. Some people on the beach look over.
"Henry," he says, "the Devil created the world when God wasn't looking"
He kicks down the little kids' sand castle and goes somewhere with the girls. — Drew Lerman

He awoke on the desert gliding at seventyfive, to see a single great headlight topping a rise not far off and bearing toward him. Vaguely he remembered being under the eye of the law most of the night, pursued by cops in white cars like their uniforms, so he slowed her to an unreasonable speed and crept on with two restless wheels in the sand. Ahead of him the light veered off to the right, out of disappointment or what, and it appeared to rise quickly into the air. He soon saw why: it was the moon being chased by the sun. — Douglas Woolf

Are you tired of sand being kicked in your face? I promise you new muscles in days! — Charles Atlas

When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha. — Shunryu Suzuki

I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why. — Celma Ribeiro

The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's always bothered me. There is within it the implication that it is more difficult for God to care about a gnat than about a galaxy. Creation is just as visible in a grain of sand as in a skyful of stars.
The church is not immune from the bigger-is-better heresy. One woman told of going to a meeting where only a handful of people turned out, and these faithful few were scolded by the visiting preacher for the sparseness of the congregation. And she said indignantly, 'Our Lord said *feed* my sheep, not count them!' I often feel that I'm being counted, rather than fed, and so I am hungry. — Madeleine L'Engle

A 'Bummel', I explained, I should describe as a journey, long or
short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity
of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.
Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields
and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for
a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever
on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with
some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We
have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we
have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over. — Jerome K. Jerome

Being rich had felt to Edgar like treading alone for all of time in a beautiful, bottomless pool. So much, so blue, and nothing to push off from. No grit or sand, no sturdy earth, just his own constant movement to keep above the surface. It was easy to hate riches when they surrounded him, but Edgar did not know how to be any other kind of person. He did not know that in every life the work of want and survival was just as floorless, just as unstopping. — Ramona Ausubel

When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water failing on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear. — Bhai Sahib Singh

It seems like as we stand there I'm watching my whole life with Hana, our entire friendship, fall away: sleepover parties with forbidden midnight bowls of popcorn; all the times we rehearsed for Evaluation Day, when Hana would steal a pair of her father's old glasses, and bang on her desk with a ruler whenever I got an answer wrong, and we always started choking with laughter halfway through; the time she put a fist, hard, in Jillian Dawson's face because Jillian said my blood was diseased; eating ice cream on the pier and dreaming of being paired and living in identical houses, side by side. All of it is being sucked into nothing, like sand getting swept up by a current. — Lauren Oliver

An hour ago on the sand-shore he has been looking at her as if she were the only being of any importance in the world. And now she was a nobody. — L.M. Montgomery

I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being ... — George Sand

The faculty for remembering is not diminished in proportion to what one has learnt, just as little as the number of moulds in which you cast sand lessens its capacity for being cast in new moulds. — Arthur Schopenhauer

But silence continued in the layers of the earth, and this density that I could feel at my shoulders continued harmonious, sustained, unaltered through eternity. I lay there pondering my situation, lost in the desert, and in danger, naked between sky and sand and stars, withdrawn by too much silence from the poles of my life. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But the waves kept moving, with the white wake of the ship traced in them for an instant, and then smoothed over by the water. And it was as if my own footsteps were being erased behind me, the footsteps I'd made as a child on the beaches and pathways of the land I'd left, and the footsteps I'd made on this side of the ocean, since coming here; all the traces of me, smoothed over and rubbed away as if they had never been, like polishing the black tarnish from the silver, or drawing your hand across dry sand.
On the edge of sleep I thought: It's as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent.
And then I slept. — Margaret Atwood

Like every girl who grew up being read fairy tales, I thought love was all about big gestures. But now I understand exactly what Grandma meant. It's the heart he drew in the sand on our honeymoon, driving miles to get me the best chicken noodle soup when I was sick, making me coffee every morning. — Jillian Dodd

When we reached the beach, Leif fell to his knees with a dramatic cry. "Solid ground! I'll never take you for granted again."
"Are you going to kiss the sand?" I asked.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Now I'M the one being silly?"
"Yes. — Maria V. Snyder

And you're too nice," he added, above the lap-lap of the water and the patter of sand on the water-lily leaves. "I was relying on you being too jealous to let that demon near the place. — Diana Wynne Jones

The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones Some things, say the wise ones who know everything, are not living. I say, you live your life your way and leave me alone. I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry! and they have said: thank you, we are hurrying. About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no argument. They die, after all. But water is a question, so many living things in it, but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming generosity, how can they write you out? As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside the harbor. I am holding in my hand small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist. Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep. — Mary Oliver

Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the earth's volume must forever remain invisible and untouchable. Because more than 97 per cent of it is too hot to crystallize, its body is extremely weak. The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for ... the origin of chains of high mountains ... and the rise of lava to the earth's surface. — Reginald Aldworth Daly

I love being outdoors, playing beach tennis, going for runs in the sand, or doing a three-hour hike with my best girlfriend, Mieko. — AnnaLynne McCord

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it. — C.S. Lewis

But I enjoyed the feeling of wind in my hair, and I knew my father liked to see it blow straight out when we stood on the quay and watched the boats come in. And after all it was my only pride.
The train waited behind us, puffing and hissing through its valves, and even though it was only an hour's journey to Skagen, I had never been there.
'Can't we go to Skagen one day?' I asked. Being with Jesper and his friends had made me realize the world was far bigger than the town I lived in, and the fields around it, and I wanted to go travelling and see it.
'There's nothing but sand at Skagen,' my father said, 'you don't want to go there my lass. And because it was Sunday and he seldom said my lass, he took a cigar from his waistcoat pocket with a pleased expression, lit it, and blew out smoke into the wind. The smoke flew back in our faces and scorched them, but I pretended not to notice and so did he. — Per Petterson

The book is a uniquely durable object, one that can be fully enjoyed without being damaged. A book doesn't require fuel, food, or service; it isn't very messy and rarely makes a noise. A book can be read over and over, then passed on to friends, or resold at a garage sale. A book will not crash or freeze and will still work when filled with sand. Even if it falls into the bath, it can be dried out and finished. Books require no special training to operate. — Lewis Buzbee

The gunslinger turned his eyes up to the faces in the leaves. A play was being enacted there for his amusement Worlds rose and fell before him. Empires were built across shining sands where forever machines toiled in abstract electronic frenzies. Empires declined and fell. Wheels that had spun like silent liquid moved more slowly, began to squeak, began to scream, stopped. Sand choked the stainless steel gutters of concentric streets below dark skies full of stars like beds of cold jewels. And through it all, a dying wind of change blew, bringing with it the cinnamon smell of late October. The gunslinger watched as the world moved on. — Stephen King

I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing. — Tori Amos

Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe. — Henning Mankell

I didn't despise myself for being who I was, and I never would. I wouldn't allow anyone to make me feel bad about that. That was a line I could draw in the sand. — Z.A. Maxfield

Son, a real battlefield lacks dignity and honor. When lives are being spent - actual human lives - those high-minded concepts lose their meaning. All that matters is victory. If you have blades, you'll use blades. If you have rocks, you'll use rocks. If there's nothing but sand, you'll throw the damn sand. A true war is only waged when men don't want to live to see what failure looks like. You do what it takes to win. You go wherever necessity takes you. — B. Justin Shier

She had always enjoyed the warm, calming feeling of the sand. It slipped as a silken scarf of liquid sunshine across the surface of her skin. Kayn took one hand and ran it over the surface of the sand, and it shifted as though it had been moved by a light breeze without her hand making contact. Her life now had no room for feet being firmly planted on the ground. She had to allow her mind to take off in flight and accept the impossible. She had to embrace life as a toddler. In a child's world, every breath of life is a mystery; everything had the possibility of being magic. — Kim Cormack