The Lost City of Sand

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

    “... Knowledge he shall unwind
    Through victories of the mind,
    Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
    He dreams himself his mother’s pride,
    All knowledge lost in trance
    Of sweeter ignorance.”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    What life is best?
    Courts are but only superficial schools
    To dandle fools:
    The rural parts are turned into a den
    Of savage men:
    And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
    But may be termed the worst of all the three?
    Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

    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)