The phrase "a thing that stands" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe an object or concept that is upright or stable, often in a metaphorical sense.
Example: "In the midst of chaos, love is a thing that stands firm and unwavering."
Alternatives: "an object that remains" or "a concept that endures".
There are two cathedrals in Liverpool but the Anglican is by far the most imposing, a great hulking beast of a thing that stands sentinel across the city.
The species is on his view a representation, namely a thing that stands in for the object in the mind.
(Virtue-T) and its equivalents certainly seem to convey some information: that a truth-maker is a thing that stands in some significant relationship to something true.
It would be nice to think of Raffia as a trailblazer, with various animals providing us with panoramic views that we'd never normally get to see – but the Trekker is a hefty thing that stands a metre tall.
A TREE, wrote William Blake, moves some men to tears, but for others is merely "a green thing that stands in the way".
It is the biggest animal in the picture, a great hairy thing that stands like a man, but with the eye of a bird, and most certainly a creature Rousseau would have been unlikely to find in the filthy, dispiriting cages of the zoo in Paris's Jardin des Plantes.
But, from a financial perspective, the obvious thing that stands out is the price that Facebook is paying: up to nineteen billion dollars.
The basic problem, as I now understand, is that the inside of your chimney, which is the only thing that stands between a cozy intentional fire and the awful unintentional kind, is invisible to the naked eye.
When I think about it now, about a million years later, the one thing that stands out is that it was less painful than when at the end of my GCSE year my best friend – the one I'd been on holidays with, gone to punk gigs with, and acted atrociously with, suddenly and without telling me left school and moved house.
In his annual letter to shareholders this week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos noted that "obsessive customer focus" is the only thing that stands between a company and inevitable brand demise.
Mr Romney said in his address to a rally in Des Moines, Iowa: "The only thing that stands between us and some of the best years we can imagine is a lack of leadership - and that's why we have elections". Campaigning in New Hampshire on Saturday, Mr Romney criticised Mr Obama for saying that voting would be their "best revenge" on the Republicans.
