Athabasca Sand Quotes

#1. The trebling of the population in this small and impoverished country, flowing with milk and honey but not with sufficient water, rich in rocks and sand dunes but poor in natural resources and vital raw materials, has been no easy task: Indeed, practical men, with their eyes fixed upon things as they are, regarded it as an empty and insubstantial utopian dream. #Quote by David Ben-Gurion

#2. From grain of sand,
Births light
births space
births infinite time,
and to grain of sand
do all things return. #Quote by Kelly Barnhill

#3. In the sinking sand,
where we've come to rest,
have I had a hand in your loneliness? #Quote by Joanna Newsom

#4. It is a dull sensation, your heart breaking, like the sound of a pebble dropping on the sand. Not a shattering, not a tearing apart, there is nothing shrill or grandiose about the sensation. It is merely an internal realization that something treasured you never knew you had is leaving forever. #Quote by Samantha Bruce-Benjamin

#5. Cress?"
"It's beautiful out there."
A hesitation, before, "Could you be more specific?"
"The sky is gorgeous, intense blue color." She pressed her fingers to the glass and traced the wavy hills on the horizon.
"Oh, good. You've really narrowed it down for me."
"I'm sorry, it's just ... " She tried to stamp down the rush of emotion. "I think we're in a desert."
"Cactuses and tumbleweeds?"
"No just a lot of sand. It's kind of orangish-gold, with hints of pink, and I can see tiny clouds of it floating above the ground, like ... like smoke."
"Piles up in lots of hills?"
"Yes, exactly! And it's beautiful."
Thorne snorted. "If this is how you feel about a desert, I can't wait until you see your first real tree. Your mind will explode. #Quote by Marissa Meyer

#6. When someone tells you it's a grain of sand, there's a moment where your reality falls apart and you have to reconstruct it. You have to step back and ask what the image is and what it means. #Quote by Vik Muniz

#7. I want to wash your hair with a shampoo that smells like fruit - mango, or strawberries. I want to walk on a beach with you, dragging a big stick behind us, making a message in the sand that we try to believe an airplane will really see. I want to kiss saltwater from your lips. I want us to listen to music with our eyes closed; I want to read musty books while lying next to you - books about fascinating things like mummies and eccentric artists and old shipwrecks in the Pacific. I want to have picnics on our bed and crawl into cotton sheets that smell like summer because we left the windows open when we were gone. I want to wake in the night with you and marvel at the stars and try to find the moon through the trees. I want all the sweet things in life. But only by your side. #Quote by Deb Caletti

#8. Son, a real battlefield lacks dignity and honor. When lives are being spent - actual human lives - those high-minded concepts lose their meaning. All that matters is victory. If you have blades, you'll use blades. If you have rocks, you'll use rocks. If there's nothing but sand, you'll throw the damn sand. A true war is only waged when men don't want to live to see what failure looks like. You do what it takes to win. You go wherever necessity takes you. #Quote by B. Justin Shier

#9. When she rolled over, nestling her back into Daniel's chest so that he was cradling her with his right wing, her eyelids fluttered shut. Then they flew open.
She was face to face with Cam.
He was inches away, on his side, head propped on his hand, green eyes holding hers as if they were both in a trance. He opened his mouth as if to say something-
BOOM.
The room trembled like a leaf. For an instant, the air seemed to take on a strange transparency. Cam's body shimmered, both there and somehow not there, his very existence seeming to flicker.
"Timequake," Daniel said.
"A big mother," Cam agreed.
Luce sprang upright, gaping at her own body in the sleeping bag, at Daniel's hand on her knee, at Arriane, whose muffled voice called out," "I'wuzznt me," until Annabelle's wing slapped her awake. All of them were flickering before each other's eyes. Solidly present one moment, as insubstantial as ghosts the next.
The timequake had jarred loose a dimension in which they weren't even there.
The cave around them shuddered. Sand sifted down from the walls. But unlike those of Luce and her friends, the physical properties of the red rock remained fixed, as if to prove that only people-souls-were at risk of being erased. #Quote by Lauren Kate

#10. Magic isn't something you buy in a store #Quote by Cyndi Sand-Eveland

#11. The more you lose the right to be jealous, the more so you become! #Quote by George Sand

#12. It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. #Quote by Sam Harris

#13. It is impossible to stand upright when one plants his roots in the shifting sands of popular opinion and approval. Needed is the courage of a Daniel, an Abinadi, a Moroni, or a Joseph Smith in order for us to hold strong and fast to that which we know is right. They had the courage to do not that which was easy but that which was right.
We will all face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us
all of us
have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval. Courage becomes a living and an attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully but also as the determination to live decently. As we move forward, striving to live as we should, we will surely receive help from the Lord and can find comfort in His words #Quote by Thomas S. Monson

#14. THAT YEAR THE RAINS HAD COME so gently that the Salinas River did not overflow. A slender stream twisted back and forth in its broad bed of gray sand, and the water was not milky with silt but clear and pleasant. The willows that grow in the river bed were well leafed, and the wild blackberry vines were thrusting their spiky new shoots along the ground. #Quote by John Steinbeck

#15. As your life is in His hands, so are the days of your life. But don't let the sands of time get into the eye of your vision to reach those who sit in darkness. They simply must hear. #Quote by Jim Elliot

#16. Turning one more time to face the sun, my eyes dropped to the golden sand. And then my heart filled with such impossible light when I whispered, "Look, Rune. Look at your footprints in the sand."

Rune's eyes left mine to observe the beach. His breath caught and his gaze came back to me. Lip quivering, I whispered, "You carried me. In my hardest times, when I couldn't walk … you carried me through."

"Always," Rune managed to reply hoarsely. "Forever always. #Quote by Tillie Cole

#17. At the museum a troubled woman destroys a sand painting meticulously created over days by Tibetan monks. The monks are not disturbed. The work is a meditation. They simply begin again. #Quote by Susan Griffin

#18. If one has his head in the sand he cannot be standing upon the ROCK. #Quote by Beth Small

#19. Proposition II

Each grain of sand has its architecture, but
a desert displays the structure of the wind. #Quote by Keith Waldrop

#20. If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximities which finally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds.

Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justifications for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call 'stimuli' - namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the 'true' world. 'How could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and fitted well enough into its superstructure.' But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as K #Quote by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

#21. Anyone looking back at the log later, trying to piece together a mystery, would find nothing but times and dry entries. It was a lazy Sunday. What made it meaningful were not the facts or details, but the imperceptibles. Inner life. The smell of the beach grass and the feel of sand on a bathroom floor when changing out of a swimsuit. The heat of American summer. Line ten of the log read simply: 10:22 Condor ate second breakfast. It couldn't capture the perfect toasting of the onion bagel or the saltiness of the fish in contrast with the thickness of cream cheese. It was time lost in a book - a journey of imagination, transportation - which to others simply looks like sitting or lying stomach-down on the rug in front of a summertime fire, legs bent at the knees, up ninety degrees, kicking absently, feet languid in the air. #Quote by Noah Hawley

#22. You don't have to write to me if you don't feel like it. There's no real friendship without absolute freedom. #Quote by George Sand

#23. Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand.
Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation
teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience. #Quote by Terry Tempest Williams

#24. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the representation of time itself changed; it moved away from allegorical human figures - an old man, a blind youth holding an hourglass, a woman with bared breasts representing Fate - to the impersonal language of numbers: railroad schedules, the bottom line of industrial progress. Time was no longer shifting sand; time was money. Yet the modern era also allowed for multiple conceptions of time and made the experience of time more individual and creative. #Quote by Svetlana Boym

#25. She stood on the willow bank. It was bright as mid-afternoon in the openness of the water, quiet and peaceful. She took off her clothes and let herself into the river. She saw her waist disappear into reflection less water; it was like walking into sky, some impurity of skies. All seemed one weight, one matter -- until she put down her head and closed her eyes and the light slipped under her lids, she felt this matter a translucent one, the river, herself, the sky all vessels which the sun filled. She began to swim in the river, forcing it gently, as she would wish for gentleness to her body. Her breasts around which she felt the water curving were as sensitive at that moment as the tips of wings must feel to birds, or antennae to insects. She felt the sand, grains intricate as little cogged wheels, minute shells of old seas, and the many dark ribbons of grass and mud touch her and leave her, like suggestions and withdrawals of some bondage that might have been dear, now dismembering and losing itself. She moved but like a cloud in skies, aware but only of the nebulous edges of her feeling and the vanishing opacity of her will, the carelessness for the water of the river through which her body had already passed as well as for what was ahead. The bank was all one, where out of the faded September world the little ripening plums started. Memory dappled her like no more than a paler light, which in slight agitations came through leaves, not darkening her for more than an instan #Quote by Eudora Welty

#26. We landed heavily on the sand. I threw off Khyber's embrace. "I can walk by myself."

"Good. You're heavier than usual. How does a girl manage to put on weight on a deserted island?"

"I'm just trying to keep you in shape," I replied sweetly. "Your tiny, pale-ass arms aren't impressing anyone."

"Sensitive, are we?"

But when a tree-sized stalagmite barred our way, Khyber swiftly strode forward to snap it in two. I laughed and brushed past him.

"I'm not the only one. #Quote by Heather Heffner

#27. 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. #Quote by Canvass White

#28. I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler's lap for all the trauma it would cause me. Once, when I was four, my mother and I were in a Sears and someone wearing an enormous Easter Bunny costume headed my way to present me with a chocolate Easter egg. I was petrified by this nightmarish six-foot-tall bipedal pink fake-fur monster with human-sized arms and legs and a soulless, impassive face heading toward me. It waved halfheartedly as it held a piece of candy out in an evil attempt to lure me into its clutches. Fearing for my life, I pulled open the bottom drawer of a display case and stuck my head inside, the same way an ostrich buries its head in the sand. This caused much hilarity among the surrounding adults, and the chorus of grown-up laughter I heard echoing from within that drawer only added to the horror of the moment. Over the next several years, I would run away in terror from a guy in a gorilla suit whose job it was to wave customers into a car wash, a giant Uncle Sam on stilts, a midget dressed like a leprechaun, an astronaut, the Detroit Tigers mascot, Ronald McDonald, Big Bird, Bozo the Clown, and every Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip and Dale, Uncle Scrooge, and Goofy who walked the streets at Disneyland. Add to this an irrational fear of small dogs that saw me on more than one occasion fleeing in terror from our neighbor's four-inch-high miniature dachschund as if I were being c #Quote by Paul Feig

#29. I follow his stare at the speckles of stars. Suddenly I wonder, "Aren't you guys supposed to, like, sparkle or something?" And immediately wish I hadn't. Frederik stands up so quickly that he doesn't disturb the sand. He grabs the front of my shirt and growls--his eyes are black as the night sky along the horizon, and red veins fray against the white of his eyes. His sharp canines are exposed. "I.Don't.Sparkle." He lets go of me and becomes regular bored Frederik again, no fangs, no bloodshot eyes. Just a dude sitting on the beach at night. #Quote by Zoraida Cordova

#30. Under what circumstances does such outrage thrive? The territory of Utah, glorious as it may be, spiked by granite peaks and red jasper rocks, cut by echoing canyons and ravines, spread upon a wide basin of gamma grass and wandering streams, this land of blowing snow and sand, of iron, copper, and the great salten sea. #Quote by David Ebershoff

#31. Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. #Quote by Margaret Atwood

#32. In September countless sand and house-martins jazz above the river, taking insects from the surface, from the air, thousands of birds kissing the river farewell. They creak, a sound like the air rubbing against itself. Summer is everything they know; they're preparing themselves, sensing in the shortening days a door they must dash through before it shuts. #Quote by Kathleen Jamie

#33. Zenia," he said, "I'm not good at it - tea and cakes. I have no patience with it."
She looked directly at him. "I suppose you would prefer to eat on the ground with your fingers?" Her dry remark seemed to take him aback. He looked at her with a faint frown. "Shall I sprinkle some sand on the butter," she asked, "to put you more at ease?"
He tilted up one corner of his mouth. "No." He lifted his cup, extending his little finger with an exaggerated delicacy. "I can play, if I must. How does your dear aunt do, Lady Winter? I hear she has the vapors once an hour. I have a receipt for a rhubarb plaster - most efficacious! Of course, if you prefer a more permanent cure, nothing can surpass a fatal dose of arsenic. #Quote by Laura Kinsale

#34. Perrotte frowned. "I'd like to turn a plowshare into a sword ," she said. "I'd cut our way out of those thorns, and then use it to run my enemies through - " She bit off her next words and swallowed them. Sand stared at her, aghast. She met his eyes, defiant. "What? You don't like bloodthirstiness?" she asked. "Pardon? No. I'm horrified that you would dull a sword on that thorn brake. I could make you some pretty good hedge shears. #Quote by Merrie Haskell

#35. Everybody needs to go to Mongolia just to see what it is to be a human being again. #Quote by Milla Jovovich

#36. There it is again. Promises. They used to hold such high value when I was younger. Now they just bore into my heart like a knife just waiting to twist. I brush the sand from my pants. #Quote by Celia Mcmahon

#37. It is sad, no doubt, to exhaust one's strength and one's days in cleaving the bosom of this jealous earth, which compels us to wring from it the treasures of its fertility, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread is, at the end of the day's work, the sole recompense and the sole profit attaching to so arduous a toil. #Quote by George Sand

#38. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain 'good' waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back 'bad' waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How #Quote by Yuval Noah Harari

#39. The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959. [ ... ] I'm tired of looking at the photograph now. I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us ... All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. [ ... ] It's October, 1985. I'm basking in the two-million-year-old light of Andromeda. I can see the supernova that Ernst Hartwig discovered in 1885, a century ago. It scintillates, a wink intended for the Trilobites, all long dead. Supernovas are where gold forms; the only place. All gold comes from supernovas. #Quote by Alan Moore