Needle in a haystack

Something nearly impossible to find, lost in a vast mess.

From 16th-century England, tied to farming; needles dropped in hay were gone, as in a 1532 More text on futile quests. By 1592, a proverb lists it. Cervantes' 1605 'Don Quixote' echoes it too, and by the 19th century, Dickens' 1854 'Hard Times' used it, growing into a sharp idiom of rare finds in a messy age.