A Quote by John Cheever

When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.

John Cheever

Quote Topics

Beginnings Bigger Destruction Enter Grain Grain Of Sand Heart Sand Seems Self Self Destruct Self Destruction Than

Quote Author

John Cheever
American - Novelist
May 27, 1912 - June 18, 1982

Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches! If your love were-" "I don't understand that first one yet," Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. "Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so - is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we're on the verge of something just terribly important.

William Goldman

Everyone has a self-destructive nature in them. It's whether you feed it or not. You don't have to be a pop star to feel connected to destruction or self-destruction. But self-destruction is self-obsession, and self-obsession is not really possible if you're engaged in raising children. And if you have a spiritual life, you're constantly being asked to see yourself as one small fragment in the bigger picture.

Madonna Ciccone

If you took all the sand from all the beaches, all the desserts, and all the oceans and called that the Universe, our whole solar system would be less than one grain of sand.

Seth Shostak

I know that's really horrible, but that's how I do it in my head. I'm going to die. It doesn't matter. I don't matter. I'm a grain of sand. As a grain of sand, I may as well go out and relate to people and enjoy my short time on this planet that I have. Who knows what's coming next?

Kathleen Hanna

Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.

Truman Capote

Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.

Anatole France

Can we find "The Universe in a grain of sand"? Well perhaps, but a stone seems easier to visualize.

Peter J. Carroll

As you know, this little grain of sand has mass. A very small mass, but mass nonetheless." And because this grain of sand has mass, it therefore exerts gravity. Again, too small to feel, but there." Now," Katherine said, "if we take trilions of these sand grains and let them attract one another to form... say, the moon, then their combined gravtiy is enough to move entire ocreans and drag the tides back and forth across our planet.

Dan Brown

There are more stars known to exist right now than the total number of all the grains of sand on every beach in the entire world. With those kinds of odds, it would seem downright naive for someone to go to a beach in, say, some out-of-the-way inlet in Baffin Bay, stoop to pick up only one tiny grain of sand, and declare that that grain alone was the only place where life could exist.

Hugh Downs

The world is a grain of sand on the beach of Eternity. Eternity is a grain of sand on the beach of Infinity. The ocean of Nirvana connects both Eternity and Infinity without connecting them. Know this and you will be free.

Frederick Lenz

The torments of hell abide for ever.... If all the earth and sea were sand, and every thousandth year a bird should come, and take away one grain of this sand, it would be a long time ere that vast heap of sand were emptied; yet, if after all that time the damned may come out of hell, there were some hope; but this word EVER breaks the heart.

Thomas Watson

A man does not have to go and find where his eyes are in order to see. The heart is there, always open to you, if you care to enter it, always supporting your movements, although you may be unaware of it. It is perhaps more correct to say that the Self is the Heart. Really the Self is the centre and is everywhere aware of itself as the Heart or Self-awareness.

Ramana Maharshi

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

Robin McKinley

When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.

Shunryu Suzuki

In the Heart's cavity, the sole Brahman as an ever-persisting 'I' shines direct in the form of the Self. Into the Heart enter thyself, with mind in search or in deeper plunge. Or by restraint of life-movement be firmly poised in the Self.

Ramana Maharshi

Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and goes off with the sugar grain; so pious men lift the good from the bad.