Explaining an action or describing an object with fewer words is tough. Showing them as 16x16 icons is even more tougher. Eclipse has a wonderful collection of icons. The best part of it - the whole set is consistent in sizing, coloring and styling. (I personally feel that icons like the filter
, jar library
, plugins
are brilliantly done). You can reuse them in many places in your own plugins/RCP Application as well. AFAIK, these icons are under Eclipse Public License and so you should not be falling into any legal trap for using these (don't take my word, I'm not a lawyer :-).
Many common images (undo, redo, file, folder, cut, copy) are available thru the org.eclipse.ui.ISharedImages interface. You can get them with IWorkbench:
Image folderImg = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getSharedImages().getImage(ISharedImages.IMG_OBJ_FOLDER);
For other common items (refresh, filter, collapse all, expand all), finding the images inside the plugins jars will be a tough task. So here are some images that you can reuse in your plugins:
Add, Delete :

Collapse All/Expand All: 
Navigation:

Window operations: 



Run & Debug:

Import & Export:

Date & Time:

Editor Operations:

Vertical & Horizontal:

Flat & Hierarchical: 

Misc: Eclipse
, Config
&
, Console
, Font
Help
, Lock
, Stop
, Properties
, Search
&
, Tip/Quick Fix
, Sort
, Task
&
, Sync
&
, Pulldown Menu
, Binary
, Bookmark
, Category 
Let me know if I've missed any commonly used icon. I'll add it to this list. The complete set of above icons can be downloaded from here.
Related:
Eclipse Icons - follow up post
Searching for Eclipse - source, blogs, images ...
Accessing CVS of Eclipse.org