Sifting Out Quotes

#1. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat. Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe

#2. History had already done the really messy work, when Wintermute found him, sifting him out of all of the war's ripe detritus, gliding into the man's flat gray field of consciousness like a water spider crossing the face of some stagnant pool,

William Gibson

#3. I'd love to say that every move I make is completely calculated and I'm sitting on a pile of scripts, sifting through them for the perfect role, but the fact is that there are a lot of talented people out there and there's a lot of competition in our business.

Eric Balfour

#4. Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet?

Annie Dillard

#5. Raking over the past and sifting its dust is an occupation for the idle or the elderly retired.

Armand Hammer

#6. I do not know all of the providences of the Lord, but I do know that he permits false doctrine to be taught in and out of the Church and that such teaching is part of the sifting process of mortality

Bruce R. McConkie

#7. This is the process of mental analysis, sifting through the selves, sifting through your thoughts, practicing mindfulness, learning to control thought.

Frederick Lenz

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

Buddha

#9. It is quite extraordinary how very various are the opinions entertained on this point, and, before sifting them, one must be careful in the first place to eliminate from our inquiry the cases of that considerable class of persons who pinch themselves.

James Payn

#10. Secrets - even in hardened criminals, they were just air pockets lodged under debris at the bottom of an ocean. It might take an earthquake, or you scuba diving down there, sifting through the sludge, but their natural proclivity was always to head straight to the surface - to get out.

Marisha Pessl

#11. Cosmology is serious business and in our hearts we are nothing if not cosmologists, hanging in a cold cage sifting the ruthless jewels of existence.

Dennis Overbye

#12. Some people spend so much time hunting treasure that they fail to see it all around them. It's like sifting through gold to find the silt.

Richard Paul Evans

#13. As I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

#14. I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts.

Gillian Flynn

#15. I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say what was true. And I'll tell you frankly, that was wonderful.

Marilynne Robinson

#16. Personally, I find visualisations great for helping me understand the world and for sifting the huge amounts of information that deluge me every day.

David McCandless

#17. Hearts become attached as easily as they become broken and our minds are left sifting through the pieces, which I fear take a lifetime to put back together to achieve any form of acceptance.

Jaycee Dugard

#18. The idea is that your clients are looking for good suggestions, and they don't mind sifting through some not-so-good ones as long as they're offered with good intentions and with no ego attached.

Patrick Lencioni

#19. Between these two, where was the real self? It came to her that both Sister Cecilia and then Agnes were as heavily manufactured of gesture and pose as was Father Damien. And within this, what sifting of identity was she? What mote? What nothing?

Louise Erdrich

#20. When searching out a history, sifting through a thousand facts and ten thousand lives, one often uncovers pieces that do not fit.

Julie Berry

#21. Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.

Paula McLain

#22. Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

T. S. Eliot

#23. Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.

Toni Morrison

#24. I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives, museums and libraries, sifting through ministerial and parish records, censuses, maps, microfilm, logs, and local histories.

Hannah Kent

#25. It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.

Cormac McCarthy

#26. Sifting through our thoughts like children going through colored stones
optimistic, because although some were too dark and some were too sharp, many glittered like precious gems.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

#27. I have come to understand, like Darwin had, that earthworms are not destroyers, but redeemers. They move through waste and decay in their contemplative way, sifting, turning it into something else, something that is better.

Amy Stewart

#28. Make all good men your well-wishers, and then, in the years' steady sifting, Some of them turn into friends. Friends are the sunshine of life.

John Hay

#29. Sifting through these layers of belongings while Ira stood mute behind her, Maggie had a sudden view of her life as circular. It forever repeated itself, and it was entirely lacking in hope.

Anne Tyler

#30. It's all about intelligence; and intelligence comes down to a bunch of faceless bureaucrats sifting through all this crap.

Tom Clancy

#31. When we learn to say a deep, passionate yes to the things that really matter, then peace begins to settle onto our lives like golden sunlight sifting to a forest floor.

Thomas Kinkade

#32. Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.

Gretchen Rubin

#33. And there was no Camelot now -- now that no Queen was there, all white and gold, under an oaktree with another sunlight sifting itself in silence on her glory through the dark leaves above her where she sat, smiling at what she feared, and fearing least what most there was to fear.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

#34. Men's hearts are being searched ... it is a tremendous sifting time, not only of actions but of inner motives. Nothing can escape the all-searching eye of God.

Frank Bartleman

#35. He was now a husband and father, and they had not been in touch in years, yet she could not pretend that he was not a part of her homesickness, or that she did not often think of him, sifting through their past, looking for portents of what she could not name.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#36. Champion Ven knelt in the ruins of the village. Sifting through the rubble, he lifted out a broken doll, its pink dress streaked with dirt and its pottery face cracked.
There was always a broken doll.
Why did there always have to be a damn doll?

Sarah Beth Durst

#37. The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.

James Salter

#38. There are so many negative people in this world, so replacing the crap with positive quotes steers our minds to success!

Mark Donnelly

#39. When I'm sifting the compost seed or pruning, I argue over issues in my head; I talk to myself.

Ken Livingstone

#40. Perhaps the activity of discerning culture - sifting through it to highlight its most worthy and discard its most unredeemable - is as essential as the activity of making culture.

Brett McCracken

#41. Firing the question back is a way of sifting through our memories to pick up clues about what the questioner is asking. We understand the question okay, but we can't answer it until we fish out the right "memory picture" in our heads.

Naoki Higashida

#42. If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.

Thomas Jefferson

#43. Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Caitlin Doughty

#44. She rolled toward him, nestling close and throwing her arm over his chest. Her fingers toyed idly with the hair there, sifting

Tessa Dare

#45. I've been sifting through the layers
of dusty books and faded papers.
They tell a story I used to know;
one that happened so long ago.

Kate Wolf

#46. Instead of looking at leadership as decision making - as a rational process of sifting through data, analyzing trends, and making decisions based on predicting futures - a design framework emphasizes pragmatic experimentation.

Frank J. Barrett

#47. And each year now
we know more, but we know no better
what we see in the sky is simply
the softened gloss of the past sifting
back to us, and likewise, every atom
down the body's shining length
was inside a star, and will be again.

Christopher Buckley

#48. Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.

John O'Donohue