To twist a rope of sand. [ Proverb ]
False as stairs of sand. [ William Shakespeare ]
Would you draw oil out of sand? [ Proverb ]
Sea things that be
On the hot sand fainting long,
Revive with the kiss of the sea. [ Lewis Morris ]
As nimble as an eel in a sand-bag. [ Proverb ]
He'll as soon eat sand as do a good turn. [ Proverb ]
There is no hope - the future will but turn
The old sand in the falling glass of time. [ R. H. Stoddard ]
No grain of sand
But moves a bright and million-peopled land,
And hath its Eden and its Eves, I deem. [ Blanchard ]
Let wealth come in by comely thrift,
And not by any sordid shift;
It is haste makes waste;
Extremes have still their fault.
Who gripes too hard the dry and slippery sand,
Holds none at all, or little, in his hand. [ Herrick ]
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Thus the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity. [ F. S. Osgood ]
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk. [ William Shakespeare ]
Even an ass will not fall twice in the same quick-sand. [ Proverb ]
He is as much out of his element as an eel in a sand-bag. [ Proverb ]
Apothegms are, in history, the same as the pearls in the sand, or the gold in the mine. [ Erasmus ]
One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe. [ Coleridge ]
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. [ Richter ]
A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall. [ Ernest Renan ]
The history of persecution is a history of endeavor to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. [ Emerson ]
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. [ George Eliot ]
Precept is instruction written in the sand; the tide flows over it, and the record is gone. Example is engraven on the rock, and the lesson is not soon lost. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone. [ Rev. T. Jones ]
For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last. [ William Mountford ]
Hate is of all things the mightiest divider, nay, is division itself. To couple hatred, therefore, though wedlock try all her golden links, and borrow to her aid all the iron manacles and fetters of law, it does but seek to twist a rope of sand. [ Milton ]
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, - the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
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. [ Coleridge ]
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another.... And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal. [ John Ruskin ]
All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]