Quicksand Quotes

• When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Children, Humor

  70 Copy quote

• You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand.

  Keanu Reeves

  Moving, Fighting, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• You might be able to thrash your way out of a spiderweb, but thrashing in quicksand doesn’t work. The harder you fight, the more ground you lose. Struggling merely expedites your inevitable defeat.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Struggle, Fighting, Might

  Karen Marie Moning (2012). “Iced: Fever Series”, p.71, Delacorte Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I worship the quicksand he [Richard Nixon] walks in.

  Art Buchwald

  Funny, Witty, Powerful

  "'These are the happiest days of my life' - the long goodbye of a dying Art" by Suzanne Goldenberg, www.theguardian.com. March 31, 2006.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

  George Sand

  Inspirational, Vanity, Reason

  25 Copy quote

• Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

  John Updike

  Morning, Character, Fog

  John Updike (2012). “Collected Poems, 1953-1993”, p.186, Knopf

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.

  Hannah More

  Luxury, Storm, Poverty

  18 Copy quote

• This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

  Karl Kraus

  Art, Writing, Character

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• At last you kissed me, I could die in waves again, and one good lick of quicksand took.

  Heather McHugh

  Inspirational Love, Kissing, Lasts

  16 Copy quote

• Make today's solid ground out of yesterday's quicksand.

  Mos Def

  Life, Yesterday, Today

  90 Copy quote

• It must be a peace without victory... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Memories, War, Mean

  Address to the Senate, January 22, 1917.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never get in the middle of someone else's quicksand.

  JoAnn Ross

  Middle

  JoAnn Ross (2007). “No Safe Place”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The man who pauses on the paths of treason, Halts on a quicksand, the first step engulfs him.

  Aaron Hill

  Men, Path, Firsts

  10 Copy quote

• Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Way, Poor, Damn

  Letters to Guy Moyston, August 25, 1924 and July 11, 1925.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling.

  Aldous Huxley

  Children, Dark, Self

  386 Copy quote

• The boys had asked why, if it acted slowly, was it called quicksand. The Mollusks had replied that, as far as they were concerned, most English names for things were silly. The word that they used for quicksand was a deep grunt that translated roughly to "uh-oh.

  Ridley Pearson

  Silly, Boys, Names

  9 Copy quote

• The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.

  Edward Abbey

  Country, Distance, Land

  129 Copy quote

• It's interesting that the worse things get, the more we believe the next technological fix is going to get us out of it. But it's like being in quicksand: the more you struggle the deeper you sink.

  Sam Keen

  Believe, Struggle, Interesting

  Source: www.scottlondon.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of walking on quicksand is still beyond me. What I learned is only how difficult this art is to master and how hard people need to struggle to learn it.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Art, Struggle, People

  Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all have a personal pool of quicksand inside us where we begin to sink and need friends and family to find us and remind us of all the good that has been and will be.

  Regina Brett

  Family And Friends, Needs, Pool

  5 Copy quote

• Most days I feel like the sole survivor of a shipwreck, rowing my paddleboat across a sea of people on waves made of an infinite array of hands and crests that reveal anonymous faces. On a good day, the clouds part to alight on-lo and behold-an island! I step ashore, only find that it too is made of people, mangled bodies somehow still alive. They grab at my feet, pulling me under like quicksand. The last thing I see before suffocating is the sky, a billion eyes staring down, blinking in undulating electric ripples. The cold rain I feel on my cheeks is the tears of the people.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Rain, Good Day, Eye

  8 Copy quote

• The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.

  Margaret Atwood

  Time, Sand, Without A Trace

  Margaret Atwood (2014). “The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle: The Year of the Flood; Oryx & Crake; MaddAddam”, p.571, Anchor

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Too much success gets you resting on your laurels and creates a kind of quicksand that you can't get out of.

  Colin Wilson

  Too Much, Kind, Laurels

  6 Copy quote

• Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.

  Harold Pinter

  Art, Giving, Frozen

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.

  Sylvia Plath

  Starting Over, Judging, Forever

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.9, Anchor

  5 Copy quote

  Show source