Sink Quotes
More Sink Quotes
Just as Banaras is a prototype for sacred India , her sacred features are prototypes for the divine roles of the city as a whole. Foremost among these features are the Ganga and the two famous cremation grounds ( Shmashans ) along her banks. Pilgrims commonly say that Banaras is like the Mother Ganga, who accepts and purifies anyone and anything that come to her and transforms them into herself… each of these features, - the Ganga, the Shmashans and the city as a whole – functions as a kind of cosmic sink, a sacred dumping ground…
— Ronald L. Barrett, in p.29, 34 (Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India (3 February 2008)])
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may loose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain; But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire. Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.
Rochdale— 1812-18 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza137.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.
jonathan edwards— Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, sermon delivered in Enfield, Connecticut (July 8, 1741)
Looking round that filthy room, with raw meat lying among the refuse on the floor, and cold, clotted saucepans sprawling everywhere, and the sink blocked and coated with grease, I used to wonder whether there could be a restaurant in the world as bad as ours. But the other three all said they had been in dirtier places.
george orwell— On the state of the kitchen at the newly opened Auberge.
It was a touching answer of a Christian sailor, when asked why he remained so calm in a fearful storm, when the sea seemed ready to devour the ship. He was not sure that he could swim. "But," he said, "though I sink I shall only drop into the hollow of my Father's hand; for He holds all these waters there."
— William Arnot, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 281.
Though they go mad they shall be sane Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
— 1936 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion'.
Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.
edward abbey— "The Crooked Wood", p. 208
In this country ... men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.
adams, charles francis, sr.— Diary entry (15 April 1836), as quoted in The Travellers' Dictionary of Quotation : Who Said What, About Where? (1983) by Peter Yapp, p. 862.
Melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers but we venture out in weather that would sink them and we choose our direction.
cyril connolly— Part III: La Clé des Chants (p.115)
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.
jacques-yves cousteau— Time (28 March 1960)
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;Nor yet a floating spar to men that sinkAnd rise and sink and rise and sink again;Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;Yet many a man is making friends with deathEven as I speak, for lack of love alone.
edna st. vincent millay— Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)
Nor sink those stars in empty night:They hide themselves in heaven's own light.
james montgomery— Friends.
We rise in glory, as we sink in pride:Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.
Edward Young— Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 508
God himself could not sink this ship.
— A crew member of that vessel said to a passenger. Quoted in The Watchtower magazine, published by Jehovah's Witnesses, April 15, 1988.
Come back again, old heart! Ah me! Methinks in those thy coward fears There might, perchance, a courage be, That fails in these the manlier years; Courage to let the courage sink, Itself a coward base to think, Rather than not for heavenly light Wait on to show the truly right.
arthur hugh clough— The Higher Courage, st. 7 (1840).
As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.
aleister crowley— Ch LXXIII (Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929))
And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
james russell lowell— Pt. V - Cooper, st. 3.
I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long Then you blink and it's gone
conor oberst— The Awful Sweetness Of Escaping Sweat
They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
dylan thomas— And Death Shall Have No Dominion, st. 1 (1943)
“Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”
jack vance— Chapter 14 (p. 162)
And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak.
james russell lowell— James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics (1848), Part V - Cooper, st. 3.
While in the progress of their long decay, Thrones sink to dust, and nations pass away.
— Earl of Carlisle, On the Ruins of Pæstum. Same idea in Pope's Messiah.
We rise in glory as we sink in pride.
Edward Young— p. 485. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
"I will be forced to sink [the US ships], because even if I have one ship left I will proceed with the bombardment. Spain, the Queen and I prefer honour without ships than ships without honour."
— Casto Méndez Núñez on the Valparaiso bombardment.[ ]
* And soon Their hushing dances languished to a stand, Like midnight leaves when, as the Zephyrs swoon, All on their drooping sterns they sink unfanned.
thomas hood— Thomas Hood, The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.
