Needle In A Haystack Quotes

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

Finding happiness should not be seen as finding a needle in a haystack. Happiness is within. Each day is a blessing that brings an abundance of happiness. Therefore, finding happiness should be like finding a gift in a stack of gifts.

The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.

It would hardly benefit me to hold anything back unnecessarily, when I know what I'm asking. For you to find a needle in--God, not even a haystack. A needle in a tower full of other needles.

It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.

This is needle-in-haystack shit. And the haystack is made of needles. On a needle planet.

Needle in a haystack's easy - just bring a magnet." Eliot stared witheringly at Hardison. "You take the poetry out of everything." "Says the man who'd just punch the haystack.

Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!

I know what I'm asking. For you to find a needle in - God, not even a haystack. A needle in a tower of other needles." "Plunge your hand in a tower of needles," said Magnus, "and you are likely to cut yourself badly. Are you sure this is what you want?

People who think it’s so hard to find a needle in a haystack are probably not quilters. Needles find you. Just walk on the haystack for a second. You’ll find the needle.

If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

Most people give up finding their soul mate, and settle down to just having a flesh mate.

This,’ whispered the Doctor to Romana, ‘is going to be like trying to find a book about needles in a room full of books about haystacks.

When you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, don’t afraid to burn the haystack to save yourself from spending half your life picking through strands of straw.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for– to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world (from, 'Mindful')

I know that I am lucky to be alive at the same time as you. I know that finding you was a cosmic needle in a haystack, a joke of Internet cables and telephone wires. But I also know that you are more afraid of opening up than losing me.

But I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to find her that way. She was not a needle. This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of finding each other.

I wanted my mom, in a way you maybe can’t ever want anyone else. It was primal and sharp and it made me feel like a needle in the haystack of a cold and terrible world. I wanted my mom.

Finding my dream job was like finding a needle in a haystack. It was a crazy party in which every failed path I followed was like an attendee required to take away a single straw of hay as they departed, one by one. It took a while, and I eventually found that needle, but I couldn’t have done it without failing over and over.

Problem is, it’ll be like looking for the crazy needle in a stack of needles. And nobody say ‘haystack,’” she warned. “Because that’s just stupid.

They should change “like finding a needle in a haystack” to “like finding a pen that works in that drawer filled with pens that don’t work.

No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack

I am familiar with the phrase, ‘needle in a haystack’ and I think I understand its meaning more than I wish to.

Hi there...Let me ask you a question...How would you find a needle in a haystack?" The first-grader pauses, pensive, tugging on the green yarn around her neck. She's really thinking this over. Tiny gears are turning; she's twisting her fingers together, pondering. It's cute. Finally she looks up and says gravely, "I would ask the hays to find it." ... Yes, of course. She's a genius! ... It's so simple. Of course, of course. The first-grader is right. It's easy to find a needle in a haystack! Ask the hays to find it!

...it’d be like looking for a needle in a burning haystack.' 'Oh, I’ve done that,' Mark said airily. 'It’s a game we used to play, after we got rid of all our livestock and didn’t need our hay no more. You throw a match into the haystack, give the fire a three-second head start, and begin looking. You can find the needle every time if you work quick

Love is the only war worth dying for. But every time I say 'please, come back', I feel like I'm trying to find a dirty needle into a haystack.

For you to find a needle in-God, not even in a haystack. A needle in a tower full of other needles.' 'Plunge your hand into a tower of needles,' said Magnus, 'and you are likely to cut yourself badly.

It's like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was—

Finding a needle in a haystack was not as hard as it sounded, if you had a thread tied to the needle.

Finding the next Warren Buffett is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We recommend that you buy the haystack instead, in the form of a low-cost index fund.

Finding a feminine woman today is like trying to find a needle in a haystack while blind-folded and wearing gloves.

If you wish to find a needle in a haystack, light a match.

No, sorry, bro. R.I.P didn’t know anything more about her. Even called the branches myself but kept getting different folk. Like finding a needle in a haystack, eh? Not sure what I’d have said anyway – ‘hi, which one of you bitches wants to listen to me die?’ Lolz. I replied with a ‘lolz’ of my own but nothing about this amused me.

People often ask themselves the right questions. Where they fail is in answering the questions they ask themselves, and even there they do not fail by much. A single avenue of reasoning followed to its logical conclusion would bring them straight home to the truth. But they stop just short of it, over and over again. When they have only to reach out and grasp the idea that would explain everything, they decide that the search is hopeless. The search is never hopeless. There is no haystack so large that the needle in it cannot be found. But it takes time, it takes humility and a serious reason for searching.

Hope is like a needle in a haystack. No matter how small, and even if you can't find it, it's there. It may just take another set of eyes.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack full of vipers.

Etymology is detective work across centuries, and it’s devilishly hard work, like finding a needle in a haystack.

But I think if your dreams are small they can get lost, like trying to find a needle in a haystack...When a dream is big, you can see it better and hold on to it." -Ruthie

hunting for a needle in a haystack.

Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) The Internet has accomplished what even the most fervent consumer advocates usually cannot: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public.

He and Marten may be needles in a haystack, but straw by straw the hay is being taken away. It's only a matter of time, hours at most, before the floor is bare and the needles and right there in front of us.

It’s a game we used to play, after we got rid of all our livestock and didn’t need our hay no more. You throw a match into the haystack, give the fire a three-second head start, and begin looking. You can find the needle every time if you work quick.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant - but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these - the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

The simple fact is that selecting a mutual fund that will outpace the stock market over the long term is, using Cervantes’ wonderful observation, like “looking for a needle in the haystack.” So I offer you Bogle’s corollary: “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

Nikola Tesla, who spent a frustrated year in Edison’s lab during the invention of the lightbulb, once sneered that if Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would “proceed at once” to simply “examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.” Well, sometimes that’s exactly the right method.

And sure enough, there it was, not the sought-after needle, but, to my agreeable astonishment, the haystack in the field by the lane.

It is looking for the needle in the haystack, I grant—but in the haystack there is a needle—of that I am convinced!

Best way to find a needle was to torch the entire fucking haystack, then come back with a magnet.

Obviously, he knew how to find KCTV. Anyone who’d read The Incredible Journey would understand how un-incredible it was that dogs could find just about anything. He used to marvel at the needle in the haystack story Elizabeth had once read to him—marvel because what was so hard about finding a needle in a haystack? The scent of high carbon steel wire was unmistakable.

Today I feel like all the doors have closed on me I just needed one more chance to get my life on track. And no matter how much I tried I couldn't get that chance again. Biggest lesson I have learnt is truly remarkable. God doesn't give you the same chances over and over.. sometimes you have to swim in the deep ocean. It's impossible but just maybe by a chance of a needle in a haystack I'll find my way out.

The only thing he was sorry for was slamming the door and perhaps raising his voice to the woman who'd been like a mother to him since the passing of his parents. Perhaps she hadn't really deserved his reaction, but he was, justifiably, weary of their meddling and hearing about his father's will. Apparently no suitable maiden was going to appear on his doorstep. He seemed to be looking for a needle in a haystack.

They say not knowing is worse. But sometimes, knowing is just as bad. Knowing is finally finding that elusive needle in the haystack, only to discover that the needle was the very thing stopping the entire haystack from collapsing and burying you.

Redditch: Christ, I hadn't even expected to be here. I was only standing in Redditch 'cause I was told it was a no-hoper. They bloody-well lied. Needles everywhere, you know that? Half the world's needles, made in sodding.. I was holding out for Cheam, or Chester. A 'ch' place, a nice little English 'ch' place. Not 'Redditch', listen to that. It's not a name, it's a fucking noise. What is it, 'Redditch'? Sounds like a frog vomiting. And they told me it was Worcestershire, another lie! Atkins: It is Worcestershire. Redditch: Oh Humphrey, it's Birmingham. Everyone knows it is, listen to the sodding accent. I imagined meadows and steeples and farmyards and haystacks. Well, do you know what, shall I tell you something? You can't find a haystack in Redditch cause of all the fucking needles!

As Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, writes, “Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.” And even when the information is not false, the problem is “that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack.

MINDFUL Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

I told him I hadn't seen Thurston since a week before we left the States. I said he had no idea where I was, and I had no way of finding him either. "We fell out," I said. "I don't think he was talking to me." He smiled. "What did you do?" I felt like crying. That doesn't happen often, to me. "I hurt his feelings." I told him. "I said some things I shouldn't. And then I got dragged here, so I lost him. He's a needle in a haystack." Ernest nodded. "The world is a very big place when you're looking for someone." "I miss him," I said. "And I don't know what I'm supposed to do next." "Get on with the business of living," Ernest told me. "You don't have any other choice.

The prosecution apparently also used other less-than-ethical and hardly professional tactics as well, including “hay stacking.” Hay stacking involves deliberately making it difficult for the other side to sort out documents and evidence - much like looking for a needle in a haystack. Along with delivering documents in disarray, another bratty move involves delivering evidence without giving the other side enough time to make sense of it. Like delivering piles of written evidence less than 30 minutes before court is scheduled to begin. On more than one occasion, Nelson was left scrambling to sort out hundreds, if not thousands of pages. Sure, things like this might happen occasionally. But [Attorney General] Ellison and his prosecution team were doing this repeatedly.

It wasn’t long before Tesla realized that his academic training and mathematical skills had given him a great engineering advantage over Edison’s plodding strategy of trial and error. In a bitter moment of reminiscence, at the time of Edison’s death in 1931, Tesla said: “If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search…

She uploaded an image of Scythe Faraday to see if she could isolate videos in which he appeared, but as she suspected, nothing came back. The Thunderhead’s hands-off policy when it came to scythes meant that scythe’s images were not tagged in any way. Still, she had successfully narrowed the field from billions of records to millions. However, tracking Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day he died was like trying to find a needle in a field of haystacks that stretched to the horizon. Even so, she was determined to find what she was looking for, no matter how long it took.

Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world — to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these — the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass? — MARY OLIVER, “MINDFUL

When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude? I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it was probably gone. But when I finally reached the seventy-ninth net, I saw the paddle lying in a few bushes where I’d tied up a headliner, which is a rope leading to the net. It was almost like a religious experience for me. What were the odds of my finding a lost paddle floating in a current on a washed-out river? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

Have your goblins learned anything about Hafgan’s shield?” “Aye. We learned tha’ lookin’ fer it is righ’ bootless. Yer definitely nae th’ only one tryin’.” “Did you learn who else has been making inquiries?” “Aye, but tha’ hardly narrows it doon. Everyone. Huntin’ Hafgan’s shield is such a time-honored tradition among th’ Unseelie, it’s apparently a sayin’.” “Like an idiom?” I said. “You mean they say hunting Hafgan’s shield the way we say a fool’s errand or a wild goose chase?” “Thassit. Idiom. But why wouldja chase a goose?” Nudd wrinkled up his nose. “Geese is terrifyin’.” “Yes, yes. We can all agree that geese are the worst of birds,” said Jackaby. “So, everybody wants to find the shield and nobody knows where to look. We have learned nothing. This leaves us with slightly more haystack and still no needle.

Justice was nothing but a concept, not a fact, manipulated and ceaselessly redefined by everyone from the manufacturers of pop culture in Hollywood to politicians to self-appointed deep thinkers who were as susceptible to intellectual fashion trends as the average teenager was driven to want whatever sneakers and jeans were the cool gear of the moment. What he sought in his new life in Pinehaven, in the wake of his wife’s long-unsolved murder, was not justice but truth. Truth could not be redefined. Truth was what it was. The simple task of finding the truth was complicated only by the haystacks of lies you had to sort through to find the shiny needle. He had no illusions that he would ever learn the identity of Lissa’s drive-by killer, or that any forensic autopsy would provide him with the full truth of any human act of violence.

He closes his eyes. What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone. When I was in Italy, he thinks, I saw Virgins painted on every wall, I saw in every fresco the sponged blood-colour of Christ's robe. I saw the sinuous tempter that winds from a branch, and Adam's face as he was tempted. I saw that the serpent was a woman, and about her face were curls of silver-gilt; I saw her writhe about the green bough, saw it sway under her coils. I saw the lamentation of Heaven over Christ crucified, angels flying and crying at the same time. I saw torturers nimble as dancers hurling stones at St Stephen, and I saw the martyr's bored face as he waited for death. I saw a dead child cast in bronze, standing over its own corpse: and all these pictures, images, I took into myself, as some kind of prophecy or sign. But I have known men and women, better than me and closer to grace, who have meditated on every splinter of the cross, till they forget who and what they are, and observe the Saviour's blood, running in the soaked fibres of the wood. Till they believe themselves no longer captive to misfortune nor crime, nor in thrall to a useless sacrifice in an alien land. Till they see Christ's cross is the tree of life, and the truth breaks inside them, and they are saved. He sands his paper. Puts down his pen. I believe, but I do not believe enough. I said to Lambert, my prayers are with you, but in the end I only prayed for myself, that I might not suffer the same death.

My route, Sior Francis—and don't be surprised when you hear it—my route when I set out to find God... was... laziness. Yes, laziness. If I wasn't lazy I would have gone the way of respectable, upstanding people. Like everyone else I would have studied a trade—cabinet-maker, weaver, mason—and opened a shop; I would have worked all day long, and where then would I have found time to search for God? I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack: that's what I would have said to myself. All my mind and thoughts would have been occupied with how to earn my living, feed my children, how to keep the upper hand over my wife. With such worries, curse them, how could I have the time, or inclination, or the pure heart needed to think about the Almighty? But by the grace of God I was born lazy. To work, get married, have children, and make problems for myself were all too much trouble. I simply sat in the sun during winter and in the shade during summer, while at night, stretched out on my back on the roof of my house, I watched the moon and the stars. And when you watch the moon and the stars how can you expect your mind not to dwell on God? I couldn't sleep any more. Who made all that? I asked myself. And why? Who made me, and why? Where can I find God so that I may ask Him? Piety requires laziness, you know. It requires leisure—and don't listen to what others say. The laborer who lives from hand to mouth returns home each night exhausted and famished. He assaults his dinner, bolts his food, then quarrels with his wife, beats his children without rhyme or reason simply because he's tired and irritated, and afterwards he clenches his fists and sleeps. Waking up for a moment he finds his wife at his side, couples with her, clenches his fists once more, and plunges back into sleep.... Where can he find time for God? But the man who is without work, children, and wife thinks about God, at first just out of curiosity, but later with anguish.

After my dad started making duck calls, he’d leave town for a few days, driving all over Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas trying to sell them. He left me in charge of the fishing operation. I was only a teenager, but it was my responsibility to check almost eighty hoop nets three times a week. Looking back now, it was pretty dangerous work for a teenager on the river, especially since I’d never done it alone. If you fell out of the boat and into the river, chances were you might drown if something went wrong and you were alone. But I was determined to prove to my father that I could do it, so I left the house one morning and spent all day on the river. I checked every one of our hoop nets and brought a mound of fish back to Kay to take to market. I was so proud of myself for pulling it off without anyone’s help! When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude? I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it was probably gone. But when I finally reached the seventy-ninth net, I saw the paddle lying in a few bushes where I’d tied up a headliner, which is a rope leading to the net. It was almost like a religious experience for me. What were the odds of my finding a lost paddle floating in a current on a washed-out river? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

WHY DIVERSIFY? During the bull market of the 1990s, one of the most common criticisms of diversification was that it lowers your potential for high returns. After all, if you could identify the next Microsoft, wouldn’t it make sense for you to put all your eggs into that one basket? Well, sure. As the humorist Will Rogers once said, “Don’t gamble. Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.” However, as Rogers knew, 20/20 foresight is not a gift granted to most investors. No matter how confident we feel, there’s no way to find out whether a stock will go up until after we buy it. Therefore, the stock you think is “the next Microsoft” may well turn out to be the next MicroStrategy instead. (That former market star went from $3,130 per share in March 2000 to $15.10 at year-end 2002, an apocalyptic loss of 99.5%).1 Keeping your money spread across many stocks and industries is the only reliable insurance against the risk of being wrong. But diversification doesn’t just minimize your odds of being wrong. It also maximizes your chances of being right. Over long periods of time, a handful of stocks turn into “superstocks” that go up 10,000% or more. Money Magazine identified the 30 best-performing stocks over the 30 years ending in 2002—and, even with 20/20 hindsight, the list is startlingly unpredictable. Rather than lots of technology or health-care stocks, it includes Southwest Airlines, Worthington Steel, Dollar General discount stores, and snuff-tobacco maker UST Inc.2 If you think you would have been willing to bet big on any of those stocks back in 1972, you are kidding yourself. Think of it this way: In the huge market haystack, only a few needles ever go on to generate truly gigantic gains. The more of the haystack you own, the higher the odds go that you will end up finding at least one of those needles. By owning the entire haystack (ideally through an index fund that tracks the total U.S. stock market) you can be sure to find every needle, thus capturing the returns of all the superstocks. Especially if you are a defensive investor, why look for the needles when you can own the whole haystack?

I am a haystack in a needle of time.

He had a reputation for clearing his desk of every file before leaving every day. Without a haystack, he felt, you can’t lose any needles.

The only thing more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack is finding a needle in a needlestack.

Gertie shook her head. “Think of it as a needle, in a dumpster of needles, hidden inside a giant haystack.

The Korean equivalent of “looking for a needle in a haystack” is “looking for Mr. Kim in Seoul.” Indeed, more than 21 percent of the population bears that family name. A further 15 percent bears the name Lee, and around 9 percent goes by Park.

The Haystack Method describes a process where you first focus on gathering stories and ideas (the hay) and then use them to define a trend (the needle), which gives meaning to them all collectively.

The digital transformation scorecard allows you to focus on the most important things. Without scorecards, it will become like searching for a needle in the haystack.

Damn. I think you’re right. Without help, it’s needle-in-a-haystack time. Thanks for handling that for me. And let me know what the school says. If they give you any guff, let me know. I’ve still got friends in the administration. They’ll talk if we need them to. What about Jane Macias? What’s happening there?” Lincoln

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, suppose an investor still believed that superior investment management really does exist. Two issues remain: First, it is clear that such skill is very rare; and second, there appears to be no effective way to find such skill before it has been demonstrated. As I indicated in chapter 7, the best-performing funds in one period of time are not the best performers in the next period. The top performers of the 1990s had dreadful returns in the first decade of the 2000s. Paul Samuelson summed up the difficulty in the following parable. Suppose it was demonstrated that one out of twenty alcoholics could learn to become a moderate social drinker. The experienced clinician would answer, “Even if true, act as if it were false, for you will never identify that one in twenty, and in the attempt five in twenty will be ruined.” Samuelson concluded that investors should forsake the search for such tiny needles in huge haystacks.

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.” —Nikola Tesla

Even armed with my new information, this strip of city was still one large haystack. And Molly was still one small needle.

The answer — the way you find an actual needle in an actual haystack — is to burn the haystack to the ground. What you’ll be left with is the needle, because metal doesn’t burn.

This is hopeless. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, except they didn’t even know what the needle looked like or where to find the haystack.

Getting straight answers out of Nakayama was like catching a shadow and pulling its teeth with a needle from a haystack. Kalinske

Play the Odds of Love {Couplet} What are the odds we'd meet inside a needle's eye? Perchance, should either of us die before we've said goodbye, Let's make solemn vow that we shall meet again In the haystack that was the needle's den.

Perspective [10w] In every needle there's a haystack, if you step back.

It’s easy to find a needle in a haystack! Ask the hays to find it!

Myron didn’t know what he hoped to find here, but stumbling around blind was a big part of his so-called investigations. You don’t so much painstakingly search for the needle in the haystack as haphazardly leap into various haystacks, barefoot and naked, and then flail wildly and hope that hey, ouch, there’s a needle. Myron

Trying to pick the stocks that outperform the average is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

This can be a Herculean task, akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Or, more accurately, a needle in a needle stack.

Hope can be like a needle in a haystack. No matter how small, and even if you can't find it, it's there. It may just take another set of eyes.

He took the cup to the sink. There, in the mirror staring back, was a circular bandage in the middle of his forehead. He touched it, gently. The fog cleared. The Haystack and the fan and the mist. The needle. Vertigo smacked him. He held onto the sink. It got worse. He sank to his knees and crawled to the bed while the memories settled. It was strange how his mind was like water and the memories swirled like grains of sand. There was something he was supposed to remember but it was so hard. Summer camp? FBI? Damn, he couldn’t remember it now. He had journeyed through the needle to some… dream. Foreverland. It was torture to get there.

To the side on the lower level was a room where all the sporting and hunting equipment was kept in lockers. Tyrell ruled this area and—by now—he had returned to it. He looked up when Aidan came running in with Sheridan’s bow and quiver. “I was wondering if I’d see you back here,” he said as he checked everything over. “Found all her arrows, but one, but it’s okay. She probably buried it in the hay.” “Like a needle in a haystack?” mused Aidan.

Here, for the first time, I tell the story. The story that was lost, like a needle, in a haystack of reportage.

Geary sometimes wondered just how much accumulated knowledge mankind had hopelessly buried within databases collecting and endlessly storing everything possible. In ancient times, knowledge had been lost because copies no longer existed. Nowadays it was lost because copies of everything existed and finding a particular piece of information made the old needle in a haystack look like an easy task, even if you knew the information was there to begin with.

Remember that there is only one important time and it is Now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person with whom you are, who is right before you...” Leo Tolstoy

he was a man whose significance in the greater scheme of things could be figured along familiar ratios: pebble: beach raindrop: ocean needle: haystack

He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble: Beach. Raindrop: Ocean. Needle: Haystack.

F-35C & The South China Sea... Now what could possibly go wrong with that combination? I guess China will now be looking for that needle in a haystack.

It's when you have a roll in the hay that you inadvertently discover the needle in the haystack.

It is common for one party to a transaction to have better information than another party. In the parlance of economists, such a case is known as an information asymmetry. We accept as a verity of capitalism that someone (usually an expert) knows more than someone else (usually a consumer). But information asymmetries everywhere have in fact been gravely wounded by the Internet. Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) The Internet has accomplished what even the most fervent consumer advocates usually cannot: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public. The Internet has proven particularly fruitful for situations in which a face-to-face encounter with an expert might actually exacerbate the problem of asymmetrical information—situations in which an expert uses his informational advantage to make us feel stupid or rushed or cheap or ignoble. Consider a scenario in which your loved one has just died and now the funeral director (who knows that you know next to nothing about his business and are under emotional duress to boot) steers you to the $8,000 mahogany casket. Or consider the automobile dealership: a salesman does his best to obscure the car’s base price under a mountain of add-ons and incentives. Later, however, in the cool-headed calm of your home, you can use the Internet to find out exactly how much the dealer paid the manufacturer for that car. Or you might just log on to TributeDirect.com and buy that mahogany casket yourself for only $3,595, delivered overnight.