Ballast Quotes

• Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Time, Men

  Mark Twain (1897). “More Tramps Abroad”

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• Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

  William Penn

  Inspirational, Funny, Sailing

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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• Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.

  Samuel Beckett

  Dog, Habit, Chains

  Samuel Beckett (1931). “Proust”

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• It becomes necessary to learn how to clear the mind of all clouds, to free it of all useless ballast and debris by dismissing the burden of too much concern with material things.

  Indra Devi

  Clouds, Mind, Useless

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• There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

  James Russell Lowell

  Business, Advice, Risk

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1220, Delphi Classics

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• Praise a fool, and slay him; for the canvas of his vanity is spread; His bark is shallow in the water, and a sudden gust shall sink it: Praise a wise man, and speed him on his way; for he carrieth the ballast of humility, And is glad when his course is cheered by the sympathy of brethren ashore.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Wise, Humility, Men

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1857). “Complete poetical works: containing: Proverbial philosophy, A thousand lines, Hactenus, Geraldine, and miscellaneous poems. With a portrait of the author”, p.90

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• Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Time, Health

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.100, Courier Corporation

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• Enthusiasms, like stimulants, are often affected by people with small mental ballast

  Minna Antrim

  People, Enthusiasm, Affected

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• Beauty Queen' is the weirdest, strangest, and most perfect play to do before 'Hedda Gabler', because there are so many similar issues for Maureen and Hedda. I had played leading ladies before but couldn't really hook into them. After 'An American Daughter' and 'Beauty Queen', I had all the ballast.

  Kate Burton

  Mother, Daughter, Queens

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• Time and tide wait for no man.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Inspirational, Birthday, Time

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• Wit gives an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.

  William Penn

  Giving, Wit, Edges

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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• Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.

  Jerome Groopman

  Hope, Pitfalls, Path

  Jerome Groopman (2005). “The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness”, Random House Trade Paperbacks

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• Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state - however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor.

  George Orwell

  Fear, Ignorance, Prejudice

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• A vow imparts stability, ballast and firmness to one's character.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Character, Vow, Firmness

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.57, Courier Corporation

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• Hatred is the ballast of the rock which lies upon our necks and underfoot.

  Maya Angelou

  Lying, Hate, Rocks

  Maya Angelou (2015). “The Complete Poetry”, p.250, Random House

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• When you cut it up, put the pieces in your mouth and swallowed them, the British hamburger shaped itself to the bottom on your stomach like ballast, while interacting with your gastric juices to form an incipient belch of enormous potential, an airship which had been inflated in a garage. This belch, when silently released, would cause people standing twenty yards away to start examining the soles of their shoes. The vocalized version sounded like a bag of tools thrown into a bog.

  Clive James

  Funny, Cutting, Shoes

  Clive James (1991). “Falling Towards England: (Unreliable Memoirs Continued)”, Isis Large Print Books

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• The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Mind, Despair, Levity

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• My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.

  Walt Whitman

  Ties, Sea, Vision

  Walt Whitman (2011). “Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition”, p.67, University of Iowa Press

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• If the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Pain, Adversity, Successful

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “Studies in Pessimism”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective [propaganda] will be.

  Adolf Hitler

  Media, Intellectual, Mein Kampf

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?

  Nick Hornby

  Believe, Character, People

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.85, Penguin

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• Seamen three! what men be ye?
  Gotham's three Wise Men we be.
  Whither in your bowl so free?
  To rake the moon from out the sea.
  The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine,
  And our ballast is old wine.

  Thomas Love Peacock

  Wise, Wine, Moon

  Thomas Love Peacock (1850). “Headlong hall and Nightmare abbey”, p.152

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• And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Frustration, Men, Order

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• Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast. Yet it must be confessed that wit given an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.

  William Penn

  Judgment, Given, Sail

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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• Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.

  Félix J. Palma

  Cousin, Attitude, Literary Genre

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