Lady Wentworth. 
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
                                    
“There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea.”
Of a trip to India, in With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (1979), p. 135 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Aos1iJ9YfRwC&pg=PA135&dq=%22howard+thurman%22+india&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bmNeT47pDIqZ8QPJt9XvDg&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22howard%20thurman%22%20india&f=false
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Howard Thurman 20
American writer 1899–1981Related quotes
“God is a flowing and ebbing sea which ceaselessly flows out into all his beloved”
                                        
                                        The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340) 
Context: God is a flowing and ebbing sea which ceaselessly flows out into all his beloved according to their needs and merits and which flows back with all those upon whom he has bestowed his gifts in heaven and on earth, together with all they possess or are capable of.
                                    
Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics
                                        
                                        "The Old and the New". 
Voices from the Crowd, and Town Lyrics (1857)
                                    
“Life's a match in a gas tank. Don't ever mourn the ebbing tide.”
Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)
                                
                                    “Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                                        
                                        " Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=265", st. 1 (1934), st. 1 
Context: Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.
                                    
                                        
                                        "Fear", pp. 31, Harper Row 1966 
Native Son (1940)