Waves Quotes
More Waves Quotes
Over this country, when the giant Eagle flings the shadow of his wing, the land is darkened. So compact is it that the wing covers all its extent in one pause of the flight. The sea breaks on the pale line of the shore; to the Eagle's proud glance waves run in to the foot of the hills that are like rocks planted in green water.
hugh walpole— Rogue Herries (1930), first lines.
The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves. A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as "I am such an important man" or "I am so and so". Level the mound of "I" to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.
ramakrishna— p. 385 (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942))
Then, cleaving the grass, gazelles appear (The gentler dolphins of kindlier waves).
— Thomas Sturge Moore, "The Gazelles", line 13; from The Centaur's Booty (London: Duckworth, 1903) p. ix.
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— 1831Table Talk (published1835), entry for18 Dec.
Many-maned scud-thumper, tub of male whales, maker of worn wood, shrub- ruster, sky-mocker, rave! portly pusher of waves, wind-slave.
John Hoyer Updike— 1960 Telephone Poles and Other Poems,'Winter Ocean'.
Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.
Anton Chekhov— The Letter
As the moon's fair image quaketh in the raging waves of ocean. Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, moves with silent peaceful motion.
Heinrich Heine— Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, Prologue, No. 23.
The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves. A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as "I am such an important man" or "I am so and so". Level the mound of "I" to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.
— Ramakrishna, as quoted in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) as translated by Swami Nikhilananda, p. 385
Every time I stand before a beautiful beach, its waves seem to whisper to me: If you choose the simple things and find joy in nature's simple treasures, life and living need not be so hard.
Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead.
— 1896 'A Song of the Dead'.
Oh, my soul! why art thou so often disquieted within thee? How is it that thou hast so little faith? Wilt thou never learn that Jesus has even the least of His little boats always under His watchful eye, and all the winds and the waves obey Him?
theodore l. cuyler— P. 236. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.
herrick johnson— P. 57. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
It is not the right angle that attracts me.nor the straight line, tough, inflexible,created by man.what attracts me is the free, sensual curve.the curve I find in the mountains of my country,in the sinuous course of its rivers,in the waves of the sea,in the clouds of the sky,in the body of the favourite woman.Of curves is made all the universe.
oscar niemeyer— As quoted on a Photo page on the Museum of Contemporary Art over Baia da Guanabara
I am not old, — I cannot be old, Though threescore years and ten Have wasted away, like a tale that is told,The lives of other men:I am not old; though friends and foes Alike have gone to their graves, And left me alone to my joys or my woes, As a rock in the midst of the waves.
martin farquhar tupper— The Song of Seventy
Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.
john tyndall— Professor Virchow and Evolution
The eager or dutiful persons who subject themselves to these tidal waves of the classics and the moderns find everything wonderful in an absent-minded way. The wonder washes over them rather than into them, and one of its effects is to make anything shocking or odd suddenly interesting enough to gain a month's celebrity. And so another by-product of our come-one, come-all policy is the tendency to reward cleverness, not art, and to put one more hurdle in the path of the truly original artist.
jacques barzun— "A Surfeit of Fine Art" (1986), p. 127
Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.
margaret fuller— Letter (21 April 1850).
All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.
john muir— "Three Adventures in the Yosemite", The Century Magazine volume LXXXIII, number 5 (March 1912) pages 656-661 (at page 661); modified slightly and reprinted in The Yosemite (1912), chapter 4: Snow Banners
The barren island dreams in flowers, while blow The south winds, drawing haze o'er sea and land; Yet the great heart of ocean, throbbing slow, Makes the frail blossoms vibrate where they stand; And hints of heavier pulses soon to shake Its mighty breast when summer is no more, And devastating waves sweep on and break, And clasp with girdle white the iron shore.
celia thaxter— "Rockweeds" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 21 (March 1868), p. 269.
Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off.
thomas moore— Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Light of the Harem, line 183.
I saw thee in a vision of the night Transfigured; for it seemed that on thy brows The heavens did rest with all their stars, like boughs Laden with blossoms; round thy feet the bright Green waves, like grass, ran rippling, strewn with white Star-fragments of rent petals: wasted vows, And ruined prayers I thought them, such as house In hearts that love and are not loved aright.
— XLVI. "I saw thee in a vision of the night"
And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thoughts; Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the waves In roarings round the coral reef.
— Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), XXXVI.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away; Agayne I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tyde and made my paynes his prey.
Edmund Spenser— Edmund Spenser, Sonnet LXXV. (Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations)
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
carl sagan— Carl Sagan (1994) Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space p. 159
Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!
— Richard Henry Dana, The Little Beach Bird, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 57.
Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains.
archilochus— As quoted in Eclipse (1999) by James Turrell.
Our Mountains are cover'd with Imperial Oak Whose Roots, like our liberties, ages have nourished But long e're our Nation submits to the Yoke Not a Tree shall be left on the Field where it Flourished Should Invasion impend, every Tree would defend From the Hill tops they shaded, our Shores to defend For ne'er shall the Sons of Columbia be Slaves While the Earth bears a Plant, or the Sea rolls its waves.
— Caption from a bowl made in Liverpool, for export to the US
