The Lost City of Sand

Famous quotes containing the words lost, city and/or sand:

    “Clogged and soft and sloppy eyes
    Have lost the light that bites or terrifies.
    There are no swans and swallows any more.
    The people settled for chicken and shut the door.”
    —Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    “A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)