Top 55 Sieve Quotes & Sayings

All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.

I'd like to hear them be a bit more creative, though. I've heard 'you're a sieve, you stink' my whole life and you can tell it's obviously affected me.

The worldly wisdom of the foolish man Is like a sieve, that does alone retain The grosser substance of the worthless bran: But thou, my soul, let thy brave thoughts disdain So coarse a purchase: O be thou a fan To purge the chaff, and keep the winnow'd grain: Make clean thy thoughts, and dress thy mixt desires: Thou art Heav'n's tasker, and thy God requires The purest of thy flow'r, as well as of thy fires.

While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support.

Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.

What is this thing that has us chewing at our own selves, grating ourselves against our own sharp sieve? It is the act of stepping back. It is the act of separating, and judging. It takes only one because the one becomes two.

I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one's life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.

The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.

...the fact [is] that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience.

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.

This message in me has been like, you know, "Every day, Lord, teach me to say, 'Here I am, send me.'" No matter how uncomfortable it is, no matter how awkward it could be," no matter - I don't want to put his will through my sieve, you know, through my lens. I just want His will.

The created order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order.

His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve.

The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection.

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

Ever crack an egg into simmering water only to watch the white spread out and form wispy tentacles? It happened to me until I came across this game-changing fix: Break the egg into a sieve set over a bowl. The watery outer edge of the white will drain through, leaving the thicker white and yolk intact.

What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.

To every bushel of the powdered cement add one bushel of sand, mix them together and pass them through a sieve, then add a sufficient quantity of water to make it (by well mixing and working) about the consistency of a soft putty. It is then fit to use but should not be kept more than six or eight hours and should be thoroughly worked just before it is used.

Why shed tears that you must die? For if your past life has been one of enjoyment, and if all your pleasures have not passed through your mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then do you not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind go take your rest.

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.

When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through.

I don't think taunting chants at players on the other side of the ice is intended to be sexist in the slightest. It's like when you call a goaltender a sieve, they chant that. Is that now inappropriate also?

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

One must console oneself with the thought that time has a sieve through which most of these important things run into the ocean of oblivion and what remains after this selection is often still trite and bad.

We need to secure our southern border. Clearly, the southern border is now a nexus between immigration and national security. It's a sieve.

Customers and contracts are like water and a sieve. The customer will find the largest hole and slide through it.

Well, if you’re through taunting poor Mike, are you ready to go? (Nick) You give me any lip, little boy, and there won’t be enough left of you to run through a sieve. (Zarek)

They went to sea in a sieve, they did; In a sieve they went to sea; In spite of all their friends could say.

In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.

Without a functioning hippocampus, names, dates, and other information falls straight through the mind like a sieve.

Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve.

I pray thee cease thy counsel, Which falls into mine ears as profitless as water in a sieve.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

The American public overwhelmingly regrets ObamaCare, our veterans are dying waiting to see doctors, the IRS intimidates conservative groups, the southern border is compared to a sieve and the president assures us not to worry - smiling, golfing and at this very moment partying... Because the fundraising never stops - not when four Americans die in Benghazi, and not when Baghdad is at the brink.

There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.

This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.

Boy, you know, it's amazing how your brain can turn into a sieve, and you can literally forget episodes that you have shot.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

The things we felt most are hardest to put into words. Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How shall I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?

He read reports, examined evidence, and poured more reports up the chain than the Pentagon could read. Nothing short of a human sieve. But in the end he was just one small piece on this game board called war. End of story

Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel.

Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman.

The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car... a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little.

Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends.

We are pouring our words into a sieve, and lose our labor. [Lat., In pertusum ingerimus dicta dolium, operam ludimus.]

In America, we don't even have a border. It's an open sieve.

Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.

To waste one's breath; to pump into a sieve.

There are four types of students: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. The sponge, which soaks up everything; the funnel, which takes in at one end and lets out at the other; the strainer, which permits the wine to pass out and retains the lees; and the sieve, which separates the bran from the fine flour.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity.

Two things are easiest to do. One, to carry water in a sieve. Two, to still the mind. Freeze water. Breathe calm. Only two secrets to learn.