The Lost City of Sand

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

    All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
    Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
    Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
    musical, self-sufficient,
    I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
    Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
    Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
    island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    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)