Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.
Imagination transforms one substance into another. It changes what is into what might be, what was into what might have been. Straw becomes gold, gold straw, and neither is more real nor, I submit, more precious than the other. Pebbles turn into luminous pearls and pearls into little gray rocks, both solid and beautiful, both essential. Human beings take shape from clay, angels' wings are spun out of water, fire gives rise to the long tongues of demons, love emerges out of thin air, and the basic elements reconstitute themselves again and again.
The Chinese word Li may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order, both of which go by the book. Li is the asymmetrical, nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving water, the form of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the scattering of pebbles on beach sand.
Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.
Men are polished, through act and speech, Each by each, As pebbles are smoothed on the rolling beach.
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.
I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake on Earth as a drop of oil on my foot.
God is omnipresent; even a pebble in the Narmada can represent Him and serve as an object of worship.
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. Ialso got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.
We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.
Easy-to know that diamonds-are precious, Good-to learn that rubies-have depth, But more-to see that pebbles-are miraculous.
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!
At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.
Our little pebble of poor performance helps to start, or to sustain, an avalanche.
There's keen delight in what we have: The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.
Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.
Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
