Glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid†an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at thetop, and† It isinvisible, solid, in short a joyous and paradoxical thing, asgood a material as any tobuild a life from.

-Carey, Peter
  Oscar and Lucinda, ch.32,'Prince Rupert's Drops'.

To reform a world, to reform a nation no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

-Carlyle,Thomas
  Signs of the Times.

Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable.

-Kelman,James
English churchman, the father of theTractarian movement. He was also influential in the Oxford Movement afterJ H Newman's secession to Rome. 1989  A Disaffection.

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.1, l.52^4.