Sieve Quotes & Sayings

I'd like to hear them be a bit more creative, though. I've heard 'you're a sieve, you stink' my whole life and you can tell it's obviously affected me. — Ryan Miller

This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity. — Ann Voskamp

He read reports, examined evidence, and poured more reports up the chain than the Pentagon could read. Nothing short of a human sieve. But in the end he was just one small piece on this game board called war. End of story — Ted Dekker

Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet ... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some ... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged. — Terry Pratchett

I think we're going to ditch Kellz as your nickname and just start calling you Sieve. — Jennifer Lazaris

Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel. — Marge Piercy

At the dealership, I pulled out the sieve and toyed with it threateningly. When the salesman was ready for me, I held it up, told him I was not a tourist and demanded a large discount. — Tahir Shah

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask leave before he can lay a finger upon Job. Nay, more, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven, for the text says, "I will sift the house of Israel." Satan, like a drudge, may hold the sieve, hoping to destroy the corn; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purity of the grain by the very process which the enemy intended to be destructive. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The things we felt most are hardest to put into words. Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How shall I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp? — Josephine Winslow Johnson

One must console oneself with the thought that time has a sieve through which most of these important things run into the ocean of oblivion and what remains after this selection is often still trite and bad. — Albert Einstein

Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve. — John Piper

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - "
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point - "
MY POINT EXACTLY. — Terry Pratchett

There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water. — George Eliot

Before you speak, think if what you intend to say catches in one of the three sieves:
1. The sieve of truth
2. The sieve of love
3. The sieve of necessity — Socrates

Everybody keeps talking about 'fighting' the cancer," he said, "everybody keeps telling me to fight for my life, to fight the disease, and how their uncle won the battle against cancer and their cousin won the fight against cancer and black blah blah blah."
"Okay ... and?"
"I'm not fighting," he said. "It's already inside me ... and I'm not going to fight. I'm going to be a good host, let it pass through me.. resist nothing. Sieve. Let it all pass through. — Amanda Palmer

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve. — Khalil Gibran

To every bushel of the powdered cement add one bushel of sand, mix them together and pass them through a sieve, then add a sufficient quantity of water to make it (by well mixing and working) about the consistency of a soft putty. It is then fit to use but should not be kept more than six or eight hours and should be thoroughly worked just before it is used. — Canvass White

To me, fiction writing at any length, in any form, is a feat of radical compression: take the sprawling chaos of human experience, run it through the sieve of perception, and distill it into something comparatively miniscule that somehow, miraculously, illuminates the vast complexity around it. I don't think about short stories any differently than I do about novels or novellas or even memoirs. But the smaller scale of a story is important; the distillation must be even more extreme in order to succeed. It also must be purer; there is almost no room for mistakes. — Jennifer Egan

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature. — Carl Sagan

Once when he [Demonax, a supposed Cynic sage] came upon two uncouth philosophers inquiring and wrangling with one another
one of them putting absurd questions, the other answering perfectly irrelevantly
he said Don't you think, my friends, that one of these guys is milking a he-goat and the other putting a sieve underneath it? — Lucian Of Samosata

One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes. — George MacDonald

The American public overwhelmingly regrets ObamaCare, our veterans are dying waiting to see doctors, the IRS intimidates conservative groups, the southern border is compared to a sieve and the president assures us not to worry - smiling, golfing and at this very moment partying ... Because the fundraising never stops - not when four Americans die in Benghazi, and not when Baghdad is at the brink. — Megyn Kelly

I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call';
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live. — W.B.Yeats

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them. — Frank Drake

hand-crank sieve. — Michael Kaye

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine:
... for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement. — William Shakespeare

Customers and contracts are like water and a sieve. The customer will find the largest hole and slide through it. — Larry McVoy

is the answer none of the above
crouched in a hole like a mud-streaked fugitive
everyday a different version of
pouring it away like a water through a sieve — David Peter Gray

Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern
That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?
Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
For if thy life aforetime and behind
To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
And perish unavailingly, why not,
Even like a banqueter, depart the hall,
Laden with life? — Titus Lucretius Carus

The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection. — Paul Popenoe

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. — R.K. Narayan

Two things are easiest to do. One, to carry water in a sieve. Two, to still the mind. Freeze water. Breathe calm. Only two secrets to learn. — Swami Veda Bharati

His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve. — Lewis Carroll

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve. — Buddha

In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data. Our objective is to abstract patterns from Nature (right-hemisphere thinking), but many proposed patterns do not in fact correspond to the
data. Thus all proposed patterns must be subjected to the sieve of critical analysis (left-hemisphere thinking). — Carl Sagan

What is this thing that has us chewing at our own selves, grating ourselves against our own sharp sieve? It is the act of stepping back. It is the act of separating, and judging. It takes only one because the one becomes two. — Bonnie Friedman

Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends. — Arlene Francis

Big food companies make hot dogs with mechanically separated meat (msm) that, as described matter-of-factly by the [USDA], is "a paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones with attached edible meat under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue.". I read that and wanted to unread it. — Jennifer Reese

But very little of it can do more
than start you on your way to the real, unimaginably
difficult goal of writing memorably. That work is done
slowly and in solitude, and it is as improbable as carrying
water in a sieve. — Mary Oliver

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting. — Edward Weston

If you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. — Ray Bradbury

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand but lets the gold go free
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live. — G.K. Chesterton

The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through. — Ayn Rand

I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes a sieve, but not a pebble will fall to the ground. Amos 9:9 — Beth Moore

Our damnable memory is a sieve. It wants to survive. And survival is only possible through forgetfulness. — Erich Maria Remarque

Evolution, and the selection of reproduction-worthy genes that drives it, is the opposite of random. It is a sieve that living things have to pass through successfully, or we never see them again. — Bill Nye

She leaned out of the window slow and sleepy, and the light came through her nightdress like sand through a sieve. — Laurie Lee

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it. — Georges Bernanos

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated. — George Lucas

I commenced retrieval of vegetables and herbs from the refrigerator. "Let me help," she said. "I can chop something." The implication was that chopping could be done by an inexperienced person unfamiliar with the recipe. After her comment that she was unable to cook even in a life-threatening situation, I had visions of huge chunks of leek and fragments of herbs to fine to sieve out. — Graeme Simsion

In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve. — Arthur Eddington

My organs are dead, my bones are cracked, my skin is a sieve, punctured by pins and needles of pain. — Tahereh Mafi

To waste one's breath; to pump into a sieve. — Plautus

There are four types of students: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. The sponge, which soaks up everything; the funnel, which takes in at one end and lets out at the other; the strainer, which permits the wine to pass out and retains the lees; and the sieve, which separates the bran from the fine flour. — Ethel Percy Andrus

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it ... some stories just don't have a happy ending. — Jodi Picoult

States of the atmosphere pass into us as water through the meshes of a sieve, and storms occur in us before they break upon the world without, creating restless sensations. ("Absolute Evil") — Julian Hawthorne

156. Why is the sky blue? -A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal.
157. The part I do remember: that the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. As one optics journal puts it, "The color of any planetary atmosphere viewed against the black of space and illuminated by a sunlike star will also be blue." In which case blue is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire. — Maggie Nelson

Who would rule a nation when he could have easier work, such as carrying water uphill in a sieve? — Robert Jordan

Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The fact [is] that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience. — William J. Clinton

While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support. — Jacob M. Appel

All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be. — Bill Bryson

Sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. — Jodi Picoult

The worldly wisdom of the foolish man Is like a sieve, that does alone retain The grosser substance of the worthless bran: But thou, my soul, let thy brave thoughts disdain So coarse a purchase: O be thou a fan To purge the chaff, and keep the winnow'd grain: Make clean thy thoughts, and dress thy mixt desires: Thou art Heav'n's tasker, and thy God requires The purest of thy flow'r, as well as of thy fires. — Francis Quarles

Well, if you're through taunting poor Mike, are you ready to go? (Nick)
You give me any lip, little boy, and there won't be enough left of you to run through a sieve. (Zarek) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Boy, you know, it's amazing how your brain can turn into a sieve, and you can literally forget episodes that you have shot. — Gillian Jacobs

Without a functioning hippocampus, names, dates, and other information falls straight through the mind like a sieve. — Sam Kean

What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul. — Logan Pearsall Smith

The created order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order. — Michel De Certeau

When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through. — Madeleine M. Kunin

With these words there came the rending scream of a shattered stirk and an angry troubling of the branches as the poor madman percolated through the sieve of a sharp yew, a wailing black meteor hurtling through green clouds, a human prickles. — Flann O'Brien

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains. — Katherine Paterson

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mind you, if we we're talking about regeneration, we could go a step further and take a leaf out of the sponge book. There are sponges you can chop to pieces, whiz up in the blender, and then press through a sieve, but they'll still regenerate."
"Useful, maybe," I replied, "but I think there is a limit to the amount of fun you could have as a sponge. — Jasper Fforde

They went to sea in a sieve, they did; In a sieve they went to sea; In spite of all their friends could say. — Edward Lear

The age of the self-made man was also the age of the broken man... This 'American sense' looked upon failure as a 'moral sieve' that trapped the loafer and passed the true man through. Such ideologies fixed blame squarely on individual faults, not extenuating circumstances. — Scott A. Sandage

As he claimed the right to enjoy the literature of any period for the joy that was in it, so he claimed the liberty to profit from the insights of every generation open to his study. He would have been ashamed to know nothing of what was being said, written or done in his own day; but he felt under no obligation to find it better than the products of previous time, and especially than those which had passed the sieve of old oblivion. — Jocelyn Gibb

The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car ... a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little. — Ben Sweetland

Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity. — Grant Morrison

For if the question is absurd in itself and demands unnecessary answers, then, besides the embarrassment of the one who proposes it, it also has the disadvantage of misleading the incautious listener into absurd answers, and presenting the ridiculous sight (as the ancients said) of one person milking a billy-goat while the other holds a sieve underneath. (A58/B82) — Immanuel Kant

I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one's life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is. — Amy Poehler