“Any house built on sand - big or small - will not survive the storm.”

“Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

“I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

“I think fear neutralizes alcohol, weakens its anesthetic power. It's good for small fears; your boss, your wife, your bills, your dentist; all right then to take a drink. But for big ones it doesn't do any good. Like water on blazing gasoline, it will only quicken and compound it. It takes sand, in the literal and the slang sense, to smother the bonfire that is fear. And if you're out of sand, then you must burn up.”

Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) American author and screenwriter

“Who would lay down his life for the UN, EU or a "North American Union?"… Every true nation is the creation of a unique people, separate from all others. Indeed, if America is an ideological nation grounded no deeper than in the sandy soil of abstract ideas, she will not survive the storms of this century any more than the Soviet Union survived the storms of the last…”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

“Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

“Jesus had a nice house, a big house.”

John Avanzini (1936) American televangelist, bible teacher, author

“What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

“A house built on greed cannot long endure.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist