Grain Quotes - Page 18

• His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

  Mark Twain

  Glasses, Ideas, Hours

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.1319, Delphi Classics

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• It's not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Beach, Stars, Sky

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Fight Club”, p.141, Random House

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• Poireaux vinaigrette aux grains de caviar.” I did a quick translation. “Leeks and fish eggs in vinegar?” He grinned. “It sounds better in French.” Yeah, but did it taste better?

  Karen Chance

  Eggs, Sound, Caviar

  Karen Chance (2011). “Hunt the Moon: A Cassie Palmer Novel”, p.125, Penguin

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• When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

  John Keats

  Book, Night, Thinking

  'When I have fears that I may cease to be' (written 1818)

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• People sometimes accuse me of knowing a lot. "Stephen," they say, accusingly, "you know a lot." This is a bit like telling a person who has a few grains of sand clinging to him that he owns much sand. When you consider the vast amount of sand there is in the world such a person is, to all intents and purposes, sandless. We are all sandless. We are all ignorant. There are beaches and deserts and dunes of knowledge whose existance we have never even guessed at, let alone visited.

  Stephen Fry

  Beach, Knowing, People

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• Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains.

  Paulo Coelho

  Moving, Mountain, Tiny

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• You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?

  Libba Bray

  Girl, New York, Kissing

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• We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, out number the sand grains in the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here. The number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist... we are privileged to be alive and nd we should make the most of our time on this world.

  Richard Dawkins

  Inspirational, Thinking, Numbers

  Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

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• There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
  And, with his sickle keen,
  He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
  And the flowers that grow between.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Death, Flower, Names

  "The Reaper and the Flowers" st. 1 (1839)

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• There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Two, Hair, Justice

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Essays of Montaigne”, p.922, Xist Publishing

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• His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

  Stephen King

  Fathers Day, Mother, Cat

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• The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Flower, Heart, Dust

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• But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Friendship, Kindness, Blessing

  A Life for a Life ch. 16 (1859)

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• We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls.

  Robert R. McCammon

  Learning, Destiny, Fire

  Robert R. McCammon (2011). “Boy's Life”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.

  Henri Poincare

  Stars, Distance, Moving

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.905, Modern Library

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• We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
  The white of their leaves, the amber grain
  Shrunk in the wind,-and the lightning now
  Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Rain, Wind, Rivers

  Thomas Bailey ALDRICH (1859). “The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems”, p.24

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• When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.

  Joseph Addison

  Character, Men, Personality

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.571

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• Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Example, Add, Want

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• Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Inspiring, Horse, Dust

  Ernest Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on War”, p.191, Simon and Schuster

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• A reduction of meat consumption by only 10% would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year- about 60 million people!

  Marc Bekoff

  Meat Consumption, Years, People

  Marc Bekoff (2007). “Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect”, p.119, Shambhala Publications

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• Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.

  Donald Miller

  Christian, Heart, Ideas

  Donald Miller (2007). “Miller 3-in-1: Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, Searching for God”, p.117, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Pick up a grain a day and add to your heap. You will soon learn, by happy experience, the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and gains.

  John Seely Hart

  Intellectual, Experience, Add

  John Seely Hart (1862). “Mistakes of Educated Men”, p.49

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• Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It's a grain. It's like grits, but with high self-esteem.

  James Patterson

  Self Esteem, Food, Popcorn

  James Patterson (2007). “The Angel Experiment”, Little, Brown and Company

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• Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not
  keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote
  places to gather it, since it has rained down from a Heaven, at our very door.

  Tryon Edwards

  Happiness, Doors, Heaven

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.555, Ravenio Books

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• Solitary reading will enable a man to stuff himself with information, but without conversation his mind will become like a pond without an outlet-a mass of unhealthy stag-nature. It is not enough to harvest knowledge by study; the wind of talk must winnow it and blow away the chaff. Then will the clear, bright grains of wisdom be garnered, for our own use or that of others.

  William Matthews

  Reading, Knowledge, Blow

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