Dust

Dust is fine particles of matter.

• What a dust do I raise!
  • The fly, in Of Vain-Glory by Francis Bacon, attributed to Æsop but found in Fables of Laurentius Abstemius.

• When I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible — and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.
  • W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings), in The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1920)

• For dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.
  • The Bible, Book of Genesis 3:19.

• Down to the dust! — and, as thou rott'st away,
  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
  • Lord Byron, A Sketch

• Whose touch turns hope to dust—the dust we all have trod.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 125

• We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
  Die too.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, line 540.

• And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust
  • Phil France, Jason Swinscoe and Patrick Watson, To Build a Home from the album Ma Fleur (2007)

• Dust always blowing about the town,
  Except when sea-fog laid it down,
  And I was one of the children told
  Some of the blowing dust was gold.
  • Robert Frost, Peck of Gold (1926)

• All the dust the wind blew high
  Appeared like god in the sunset sky,
  But I was one of the children told
  Some of the dust was really gold.
  • Robert Frost, Peck of Gold (1926)

• If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes
  Will keep my talk from getting overwise,
  I'm not the one for putting off the proof.
  Let it be overwhelming, off a roof
  And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust,
  And blind me to a standstill if it must.
  • Robert Frost, Dust in the Eyes (1928)

• Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
  Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
  • Thomas Gray, Elegy, Stanza 11

• Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
  A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
  A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
  That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
  A few swift years, and who can show
  Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Poems of the Class of '29, Bill and Joe, Stanza 7.

• When darkness gathers over all.
  And the last tottering pillars fall,
  Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms.
  And mould it into heavenly forms.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., as reported in, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 179

• Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
  Before we too into the Dust descend;
  Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie
  Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End!
  • Omar Khayyám, The Rubaiyat (1120), XXIV, as translated in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Fifth edition (1889) by Edward FitzGerald.

• Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
  Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
  • Omar Khayyám, The Rubaiyat (1120), XXVII, as translated in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Fifth edition (1889) by Edward FitzGerald.

• Unug's levy was a flood, Kulaba's levy was a clouded sky. As they covered the ground like heavy fog, the dense dust whirled up by them reached up to heaven.
  • Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[1]

• The dust comes secretly day after day,
  Lies on my ledge and dulls my shining things.
  But O this dust that I shall drive away
  Is flowers and kings,
  Is Solomon's temple, poets, Nineveh.
  • Viola Meynell, "Dusting", in Verses (London: Martin Secker, 1919)

• When I was alive
  I was dust which was,
  But now I am dust in dust
  I am dust which never was.
  • One Thousand and One Nights, Tale of Zummurud and Ali-Shar

• A heap of dust remains of thee;
  'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
  • Alexander Pope, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717), line 73

• Lo, now my glory smear'd in dust and blood!
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (c. 1591) Warwick, Act V, scene ii.

• Dust claims dust.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Death (1820)

• Scepter and crown
  Must tumble down,
  And, in the dust, be equal made
  With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
  • James Shirley, Contention of Ajax and Ulysses, scene 3. ("Birth and State" in Percy's Reliques. These lines are said to have terrified Cromwell), as reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

• Only the actions of the just
  Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.
  • James Shirley, Contention of Ajax and Ulysses, scene 3, line 23. ("In the dust" in Percy's Reliques. Misquoted "Ashes of the dust" on old tombstone at St. Augustine, Florida).

• As a new-born soul, — I am naught:
  My deeds are dust in air.
  • Bayard Taylor, The Guests of Night (1871), st. 3 - 4, in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 314.

• Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
  Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.
  • John Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623), Act V, scene v.

• Or, gazing by pale lamps on high-born dust
  In vaults; thin courts of poor unflattered kings.
  • Edward Young, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality (1742–1745), Night the Second, line 626.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

• Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
  • Book of Common Prayer, Burial of the Dead.

• The sweet remembrance of the just
  Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.
  • Tate and Brady, Psalm 112. (Ed. 1695).

• Global map of atmospheric dust
• The Bibliography of Aeolian Research

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