“And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually..”

What Ever Happened to Urbanism? http://www.arhns.uns.ac.rs/wp-content/uploads/Arch432_koolhaas.pdf The Monicelli Press, New York, 1995, pp. 959/971.

Source: Going Bovine

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"
Context: When all is said, we are ruled by the amateurs and the second-rate. The methods of our departments would bring any private firm to bankruptcy. The methods of Parliament — pardon me — would disgrace any board of directors. Our rulers pretend to buy expert knowledge, but they never pay the price for it that a business man would pay, and if they get it they have not the courage to use it. Where is the inducement for a man of genius to sell his brains to our insipid governors?
And yet knowledge is the only power — now as ever. A little mechanical device will wreck your navies. A new chemical combination will upset every rule of war. It is the same with our commerce. One or two minute changes might sink Britain to the level of Ecuador, or give China the key of the world's wealth. And yet we never dream that these things are possible. We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe.

Variant: Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

Source: The Mermaid's Purse: poems by Ted Hughes

Source: Invisibility

Source: The Book Thief

"Seven American Nights", Orbit 20 (1978), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Mrs. Venable, Scene One
Suddenly Last Summer (1958)