Quotes about dust
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“It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Pages 1-2
Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Time

“Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.”

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

Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings

People, Knowledge, Time

“Excuse my dust.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Her proposed epitaph for herself, quoted in Vanity Fair (June 1925)

“He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Books, Dance

“What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.”

Alexandra Fuller (1969) Zimbabwean writer

Source: Scribbling the Cat

Dance

“Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust - of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold - smells of nothing.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Girl, Freedom

“She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

Change

“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Voluntaries
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Emerson: Poems

God, Youth

“My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.”

Diane Zahler

The Thirteenth Princess

“There is the sudden. There is the eventual.
And in between, there is the living.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. WE make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret

“Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets. I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen yet, and that Camilla, she can have her Sammy in the desert, with his cheap short stories and stinking prose, but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939)

God, Angels, Waiting

“Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“A truth comes out when it must;
A dream comes true when it will.
Though the world turn to ash and dust
A secret’s a secret still.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: The Safe-Keeper's Secret

Truth, Secret, World, Dreams

“Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things”

Laurie Lee (1914–1997) British writer

Source: Cider With Rosie

Bee

“Lilt pulled away. "I saw what he was doing, so I cleared a path for him. I helped him do it…" She shook her head, tears tracking the dust off her face, and turned to stare at the fallen tower. "Have we all gone mad to want this?”

Scott Westerfeld book Behemoth

Source: Behemoth

Tear, Help, Madness

“The wood nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God, Tree

“In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

People, Age, Sleep

“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock treeHas given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Dust of Snow http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173526" (1923) <br class="br">General sources

Way, Mood, Heart, Parting

“I'M SIGNIFICANT!!!
…
Say's the dust speck.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

“It has been suggested that hanging out with a dust bunny who carries a purse might have a negative impact on my image as a hard-core crime fighter."
"Don't be ridiculous. It's a very nice clutch.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Canyons of Night

“She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Books

“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book… it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt…”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Books, Reading

“Tell it to the cleaning lady on Monday. Because you'll be dust on Monday. Because I'll be pulverizing you sometime over the weekend. And the cleaning lady… cleans up… dust. She dusts. And she has weekends off, so… Monday. Right?”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 3: Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness

“I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“Men," Thom murmured. "Men who shook the pillars of heaven and rocked the world on its
foundations." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Forget about them. They are dust now.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Men, World, Forgetting

“At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

Star, Sun

“For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead… We're nothing more than dust jackets for books… so many pages to a person…”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books, Knowledge, Personality, Dead

“In that moment, he chose Greek. He threw in his lot with Camp Half-Blood-and the horses changed. The storm clouds inside burned away, leaving nothing but red dust and shimmering heat, like mirages on the Sahara.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Change, Horse

“Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Books, Age, Search, Reading

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday

Beauty, Light, Time, Sun

“But I guessed that no matter how strong it was, love alone couldn't turn a speck of dust into a galaxy of stars.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Love, Star, Strong

“Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

History

“Monsters don't die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust, which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Fight

“What do you do to your hair?"
"Dust, hair gel, and a little gun oil."
"Ever thought of patenting the recipe?"
"No.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

Fear

“And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.”

Karen Hesse book Out of the Dust

Source: Out of the Dust

Time

“Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust,
Not for sale.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Dreams, Star

“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Books, Beauty, Feeling

“Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Love, Sleep, Heart

“Most of humanity, he said, have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Truth, Help

“What’s the Nephilim motto again?”
“ ‘We are dust and shadows,’ ” said Ty, not looking up from his book.
“Some of us are very handsome dust,” Jace added”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Books

“You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.”

Michael Connelly book The Fifth Witness

Source: The Fifth Witness

Game, Time, Parting, Forgetting

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.”

John Webster (1578–1634) English dramatist

Act V, scene v.
Duchess of Malfi (1623)

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Art, Music, Imagination

“We cant go around picking up every pile of dust in the place just in case it turns out to be Gregor in the morning."
-Pg.242-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Heart, Summer

“To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

People, Envy, Sea, Dead

“But most days,
I wander around feeling invisible.
Like I'm a speck of dust
floating in the air
that can only be seen
when a shaft of light hits it.”

Sonya Sones book One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Source: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Feeling, Light

“Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with”

Francesca Lia Block Missing Angel Juan

Source: Missing Angel Juan

Winter, Sun

“Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain”

Alexander Pope Eloisa to Abelard

Source: Eloisa to Abelard

Death

“There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads. This is one of them.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Grass, Country

“A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Coffee, Wine

“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.”

John Fante (1909–1983) 1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent

Source: The Big Hunger

Tree

“Doesn't sunlight kill them? Doesn't it turn them to dust, or make them burst into flames or something?"
"Nope. Vampires tan, just like you and me. Well, just like you. I tend to bleach.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

Dance

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Flowers, Bee

“In the end--when all else is dust--loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith--true faith--was trusting in that love.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Variant: Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter’s hug, and realized that in the end—when all else is dust—loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave.
Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 30 (p. 242)

Love, Faith, Loyalty

“There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 2, “The Plain of Fear” (p. 456)
Context: An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

Youth, Sadness, Dreams, Time

“No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Evil, Time

“She's sent the crows out to blind the guests coming for dinner!"

What?"

She's BLINDING THE GUESTS COMING FOR DINNER!"

Well, that's one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose.”

Gregory Maguire (1954) Novelist

Way

“To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Heartbreaking, People, Feeling, Hurt

“If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”

Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976) American screenwriter and novelist

Heart, Dead

“I wanted to rub handprints through his dust”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.”

Shan Sa book Empress

Source: Empress

World, Solitude

“The full cosmos consists of the physical stuffconsciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust; add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Source: Anathem

Idea, Time

“He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

“A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star, Sun

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 25 et seq.
Context: There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Fear

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Men, Dreams

“We are all dust.”

Tara Altebrando

“His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.

Percy & Annabeth”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

God

“At least the statue didn’t rumble, “DIE, UNBELIEVERS!” and zap the mortals to dust. Reyna had once dealt with a statue of the goddess Diana like that. It hadn’t been her most relaxing day.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“When I was six years old I sprinkled sugar on my head, convinced myself it was pixie dust, wished myself invisible, and walked into the boys' bathroom at school.”

Janet Evanovich book Lean Mean Thirteen

Source: Lean Mean Thirteen

School, Boy

“She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Happiness

“Houses are full of things that gather dust”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Housing

“But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed.
And, of course, completely fake.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Smile, Girl

“Poison!" Grover yelped. "Don't let those things touch you or…"
"Or we'll die?" I guessed.
"Well… after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes."
"Let's avoid the swords," I decided.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“All books are merely delayed dust.”

George Elliott Clarke (1960) Canadian writer

Books

“Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”

Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014) American writer of children's fiction

Source: The Velvet Room

Books, Business

“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

John Milton book Areopagitica

Source: Areopagitica

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life, Star

“But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Restless Farewell

“True love is born of experience, not fairy dust.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Love

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Life, Death, God