Sifted Quotes & Sayings

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original. — David Brin

He didn't believe in a God who sifted through prayers, answering some and ignoring others, no matter how unworthy or worthy a person might be. Instead, he preferred to believe in a God who bestowed all people with gifts and abilities and placed them in an imperfect world; only then was faith tested, only then could faith be earned. — Nicholas Sparks

A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory ... dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it. — Rumer Godden

She sifted, sighed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but Lord Maccoon, her current predicament, or Lord Akeldama's safety. Which meant she could do nothing but reflect on the complex plight of her mama's more recent embroidery project. Thins, in itself, was a worse torture than any her captors could devise. — Gail Carriger

If most of what we see via the media is not live, it must be edited: sifted for value, interpreted and re-presented for our convenience. We live in a disco, and the DJ is in charge. — Rian Hughes

His hand slid up my back and his fingers sifted into my hair to cup the back of my head.
"Kiss me, baby."
I used the moonlight on the angles of his face to aim and found his mouth. The minute my lips hit his, he rolled partially into me, forcing me to my back in the bed, and my mouth opened as did his. My tongue slid inside, he growled against it and when I absorbed that in my mouth, a small moan escaped my throat. His head slanted one way, mine tilted the other and my kiss turned into a kiss. — Kristen Ashley

A sense that even if every scrap of a life were saved, thrown into a giant mound and then carefully sifted to extract all possible meaning, it would not add up to a life. — Siri Hustvedt

First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you've done so wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn't a reason, and it isn't two people you're dealing with, just one. The same one every time. — Helen Oyeyemi

Adrian sifted through the bags and pulled out a slice of coconut cream. "If I were a dragon, this is what I'd go for."
I didn't argue, mainly because that statement had no logical argument. — Richelle Mead

Holly was playing the concerned relative, the devoted sister, and if it was a ham performance Robin was experienced enough, now, to know that there were usually nuggets of truth to be sifted from even the most obvious dross. — Robert Galbraith

It was clear that Chloe, even down to the last moment, was working something out. Her eyes were closed, her face arranged in a look of concentration as she sifted through her thoughts. Just as clear was the moment she figured it all out. Lifting her head, her eyes moved up the aisle to me, and it was as if time stopped and everything else fell away. I could feel myself smile, then see it reflected in the way her entire face seemed to light up, and I did the only thing I could think. I whispered the words, Come here. — Christina Lauren

And the minibar in my hotel room was mysteriously emptied."
"By arcane forces beyond the understanding of normal human beings?" asked Myfanwy as she sifted through the in-box. It was the sort of question you learned to ask automatically when you worked with the Checquy.
"No, it was me," admitted Shantay without a shred of embarrassment. — Daniel O'Malley

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered. — Arundhati Roy

Three things." He shifted the cell phone to his left hand to accept a sheaf of messages a clerk was handing him. He sifted through them quickly. Dammit. A break in his biggest case. Looked like the scumbag's secretary-slash-lover was ready to dish the dirt on her boss. Seeing surveillance photos of said boss renewing his wedding vows with his wife after promising he would divorce her must have done the trick. Quigg suppressed a groan. A month ago, he'd have given his left testicle to nail this guy, but the timing really sucked. — Norah Wilson

The world is eaten up by boredom. You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. — Georges Bernanos

Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment - at least one moment - when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name? — Gillian Flynn

When they reached her she stood on the path holding a pair of moths. Her eyes were wide with excitement , her cheeks pink, her red lips parted, and on the hand she held out to them clung a pair of delicate blue-green moths, with white bodies, and touches of lavender and straw colour. All about her lay flower-brocaded grasses, behind a deep green background of the forest, while the sun slowly sifted gold from heaven to burnish her hair. Mrs. Comstock heard a sharp breath behind her.
Oh, what a picture!" Exulted Ammon over sher shoulder. "She is absolutely and altogether lovely! Id give a small fortune for that faithfully set on canvas! — Gene Stratton-Porter

Though I did not know her exact address, that she appeared to live almost within breathing distance of Robin, and that I lived with him, and that her pictures showed that she was now dating the mysterious Rupert Hunter, our despotic mothers, our absent fathers, the borders we had both crossed, all our many parallels and connections at every point, could not be chance. I saw it as evidence of the hidden connections between things, an all-powerful algorithm that sifted through chaos, singling out soulmates. — Olivia Sudjic

The sun sifted through the trees around the platform, and Blake stood proudly in its curtain of light. It would be retreating from him this time. He walked over to his old spot in the shade with victory in his step. He'd been trapped there for so long. He shook his head and returned to the sun's rays, amazed at how powerful that simple act made him feel. — Debra Anastasia

Watching him was like opening the door to a siniging telegram; you know it's supposed to be entertaining, but you can't get beyond the sad fact that this person actually thinks he bringing some joy into your life. Somewhere he had a mother who sifted through a shoe box of mimeographed playbills, pouring herself another drink and wondering when her son would come to his senses and swallow some drain cleaner. — David Sedaris

I may be a pawn," I said as I locked my shaking knees. "But I've been to the other side and survived the trip back and can move like a queen." Pixy dust sifted over us, and my skin burned. "Don't piss me off. — Kim Harrison

In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams! — Carl Sagan

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. — Frank Herbert

We've sifted through the eight thousand, don't worry about that. And this is the one. This is the murder weapon, no doubt about it."

Then the President has been murdered?"

I cant tell you that right now. But I can assure you that if there has been a murder, this is what did it. — Philip Roth

The tinkle of a wind chime stirred from over a window. Purple and white phlox cascaded cheerfully over the top of a nearby stone wall. Sunlight sifted through the weave of her straw hat, casting freckles of light on her nose and cheeks that shifted, out of focus, as she walked. — Caragh M. O'Brien

You stayed," he murmured ... Her softly whispered answer sifted into his hair where her lips rested against the top of his head. "You didn't let go. — Tina St. John

No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? — Bernard Ramm

Snow as fine and grainy as sugar covered the windows in and sifted off to the floor and did not melt. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

The dust was antique spice, burnt maple leaves, a prickling blue that teemed and sifted to earth. Swarming its own shadows, the dust filtered over the tents. — Ray Bradbury

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined
sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured
so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends. — Agatha Christie

Beloved, are you being sifted? Has God permitted the enemy to launch a full-scale attack against you? God knows what He's doing. He isn't looking the other way, and He's not being mean to you. Maybe this is the only way He can get you to attend to the old so He can do something new. Grab onto Him for dear life! Give Him full reign to remove anything in you that needs to go. Hasten the end of the process. Sift, dear one. Sift! — Beth Moore

The motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis or his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. — Homer

Drizzt revealed a small pouch hanging on a fine silver chain around his neck. "A few baubles," he explained. "I need no riches and doubt that I would be able to carry much out of here, anyway! A few baubles will suffice." He sifted through the portion of the pile he had just freed from the ice, uncovering a gem-encrusted sword pommel, its black adamantite hilt masterfully sculpted into the likeness of the toothed maw of a hunting cat. The lure of the intricate workmanship pulled at Drizzt, and with trembling fingers he slid the rest of the weapon out from under the gold. A scimitar. Its curving blade was of silver, and diamond-edged. Drizzt raised it before him, marveling at its lightness and perfect balance. "A few baubles ... and this," he corrected. — R.A. Salvatore

Jenks snickered. "Yeah, Rache. Why bother? I mean, this could be good. Ivy could invite her mom over for a housewarming. We've been here a year, and the woman is dying to come over. Well, at least she would be if she were still alive."
Worried, I looked up from the phone book.
Alarm sifted over Ivy. For a moment it was so quiet I could hear the clock above the sink, and then Ivy jerked, her speed edging into that eerie vamp quickness she took pains to hide.
"Give me the phone," she said, snatching it. — Kim Harrison

Truth can be sifted out from falsehood only if the government is vigorously and consistently cross-examined, so that the fundamental issues of the struggle may be clearly defined — Zechariah Chafee

Kimme and Dan joined us as they returned from their stroll along the beach. "Look what I found," Kimme announced as she dumped a pile of seashells out on the sand.
I smiled at Kimme as she sifted through her treasure. Then I thought about the treasures I had found. My eyes filled with tears as I examined each of my friends in turn. — K.S. Ruff

There was a sudden commotion in front of us.
The Seelie had just sifted in, minus V'Lane, in close proximity to Ryodan, Lor, and Fade.
I wasn't sure who was more disgusted. Or homicidal.
Velvet hissed. "You have no right to be here!"
"Kill it." Ryodan said flatly.
"Don't you dare!" I heard Jo snap.
"Fucking faeries," Lor muttered. — Karen Marie Moning

God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Virtue!
to be good and just
Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Our doom is, to be sifted by the wind, heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands. We are less permanent than thought. — Basil Bunting

Out in the Field, Down by the Sea, The Hour has peal'd, Whoever ye be, Daughter of Erin, Scotia's Son, Let us be daring, - Let it be done. It is time for The Choosing, - Americans all, No more refusing The Cry, and the Call, - For the Grain to be sifted, For the Tyrants to fall, As the Low shall be lifted, - Americans all . . . Till the end of the Story, Till the end of the Fight, Till the last craven Tory Has taken to Flight, Let us go to the Wall, Let us march thro' the Pain, Americans all, Slaves ne'er again. — Thomas Pynchon

Occasionally, especially at celebratory times, the whole gang of us would launch into a spontaneous mental game. For example, my mother used to send me to the back porch (a room containing no furniture but a simply incredible mass of Stuff) to get flour for holiday cakes or pies. I often returned to the kitchen, cringing with disgust, to announce that the flour was full of worms. No matter how sick this made me, I knew it wuoldn't bother my mother. She always just sifted the worms out, saying that even if she missed a few and they got into the food, they would simply be an excellent source of protein. Just as we were all beginning to feel thoroughly downtrodden, my father would save the day. "Everyone come up with a literary reference about worms!" he would shout. — Martha N. Beck

You should be grateful that you were even blessed for a moment. You have been rescued from your rotting corpse. You have experienced immortality. You have experienced perfection. Look at yourself. This is your purest form. Your worst qualities have been sifted out, the flaw and weaknesses blown away. The way you have been experiencing the world with your pathetic human senses? Now you know. You were living in a fog. You were appreciating only a fraction of what this world has to offer. That life was worth nothing. — Wynne Channing

The sun was up so high when i waked, that i judged it was after eight o'clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. — Mark Twain

It's bright pinky-white sand was made entirely of shell dust, like star dust, among which, if you sifted it with your fingers, were infant shells as small as the grains but perfectly shaped. Scattered over the surface were larger shells of many kinds and shapes, some as delicate as flower petals, others, though small, built to withstand any battering sea. — L.M. Boston

Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun. — Cormac McCarthy

She paused, frowning as she sifted through her memories. "I think it was my mother who said it, that Kathleen married Frank Dunn just so she could leave Haverhill. I remember thinking at the time that that must have been a powerful desire she had, to see more of the world."
Or a powerful desire to get away from her small of corner of it, Chad was thinking. — Johanna Lindsey

Closing his eyes, he held her tightly and sifted place in a general southerly direction, pushing to the farthest limits his diminished power could carry him. The moment he rematerialized, he instantly sifted again, arms locked around her.
Railroad track. Sift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Roof of a house. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Bloody Midwest. Sift. — Karen Marie Moning

Fifield's connection to his congregation extended to their views on religion and politics too. In the apt words of one observer, Fifield was "one of the most theologically liberal and at the same time politically conservative ministers" of his era. He had no patience for fundamentalists who insisted upon a literal reading of Scripture. "The men who chronicled and canonized the Bible were subject to human error and limitation," he believed, and therefore the text needed to be sifted and interpreted. Reading the holy book should be "like eating fish - we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value." Accordingly, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty and instead worked tirelessly to reconcile Christianity and capitalism. In his view, both systems rested on a basic belief that individuals would succeed or fail on their own merit. — Kevin M. Kruse

A good documentary or educational film is not raw experience. The material has passed the mill of reason, it has been sifted and interpreted. — Rudolf Arnheim

Lucien bent down and once again sifted through rock and sand, looking for gods knew what. Sunlight stroked him lovingly, the bitch. He's mine. "Go away, Anya," he repeated. Grrr! She materialized. Rather than slap him, though, she sat on a boulder beside him. He was shirtless again, his skin slightly burned, cut up and bruised. He didn't face her. "I said go away." "Like I'm going to obey you. You aren't my daddy. Unless you want to be. 'Cause I've been a bad, naughty girl and I need a spanking." A — Gena Showalter

All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted. — T. E. Hulme

You tried to slide his original curse back onto him?" Al said in wonder. "At the restaurant? And I stopped you? Sweet mother pus bucket!" he exclaimed, and I swear, dust sifted from the ceiling. "Rachel, we have to work on this communication thing. — Kim Harrison

Overhead the night was a superb arch of clear frost, sifted with stars. — Christopher Morley

I wonder what a soul ... a person's soul ... would look like,' said Priscilla dreamily.
'Like that, I should think,' answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. 'Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers ... and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea ... and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn. — L.M. Montgomery

She once used me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; I studied 'em, and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes, one day or other to hate her heartily. — William Congreve

Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction. — May Sarton

But I've been to the other side and survived the trip back and can move like a queen." Pixy dust sifted over us, and my skin burned. "Don't piss me off." Behind — Kim Harrison

There's where you're wrong. You're not human, you're Fae, and you're changing already. Fast. You broke the contract by kissing Adrian. I could kill you right now, and no one would be able to stop me. Just remember, I have Adam. Be at my club tomorrow night, or I will give Adam over to the women to feed, from him." "You can't do that!" I shouted. "I can, and I will." He sifted, before I could argue with him. — Amelia Hutchins

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

The sun weeps because it can no longer caress your skin or warm your lips." He sifted his fingers through my hair. "I do not envy the sun, Eva. But I truly hate the moon, because its light touches you in all the ways I cannot. — Michele Bardsley

They [the Founding Fathers] were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance with the principle of self-government. They were an inspired body of men. It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness ... Who can fail to see it in the hand of Destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence? — Calvin Coolidge

Now, let's go back to me bein' like chocolate that melts in your mouth."
"That isn't exactly what I meant," I told him, his arms went around me and he rolled to his back, taking me with him. Then his hand sifted into my hair, fisted gently and my head came up.
"I would hope not, darlin', seein' as every time you take me in your mouth, the last thing I do is melt. — Kristen Ashley

Greatness is sifted through the grind, therefore don't despise the hard work now for surely it will be worth it in the end. — Sanjo Jendayi

Some of the more smug cyclists live in eternal hope that humanity will somehow realize the error of its ways and reject the automobile altogether ... This is not going to happen ... never in the history of the world has humanity forfeited an invention that makes our lives profoundly easier, as the car does. Nobody ever said, "This newsprint is making my fingers filthy. I'm going back to smoke signals." TV was supposed to rot your brain and ruin your eyes, but instead of going away it only got bigger and flatter, and we now have like four hundred channels instead of three. And airplanes are still the world's preferred mode of very-long-distance travel, even though terrorists still try to fly them into buildings and we now have to be dismantled into our component atoms, sifted through, and reassembled in order to board them. So if we have yet to jettison these abominations, why would people give up their cars either? — BikeSnobNYC

Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor. All these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart. — Albert Camus

Crushed sandstone sifted through Caleb's fingers, insubstantial as dust. A breeze caught the debris mid-fall and spirited it away before it could join the ashes blanketing the ground.

He stopped in the middle of what had once been a street, his arms pulled in at his sides, his fists balled in barely restrained fury. — G.S. Jennsen

The disappointment he felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking the lilt out of what should have been girlish voices. — Toni Morrison

Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. — Homer

You think a few features scattered on your face make you plain? I am ugly to the core. All England knows it. And after reading through my papers, you must know it. You sifted through a mountain of my misdeeds. Of course you'd build a wall around your heart. You're a clever girl. How could you love this? How could anyone?"
~Ransom — Tessa Dare

His hand slid up my spine, bringing me closer, pinning my hands between us as I watched his neck bend.
I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
"Max," I warned, my body bracing.
"Quiet," he ordered softly. "Got a point to make, honey."
"Max!" I snapped.
"Let's see how good this could be," he muttered, his eyes on my mouth and I knew, I just knew, he was going to kiss me.
"Max, don't you-"
But his fingers had sifted into my hair against my scalp cupping my head, holding me steady and his mouth came down on mine, cutting off my words. — Kristen Ashley

November
with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes
days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew. — L.M. Montgomery

All the souls to explore! - It's not so necessary to love, really, as it is to settle something deep with all of those who really matter. Love and hate are the same things, differently sifted through personal ... pride, or what have you ... personal pride or even just personal-ness. — Jack Kerouac