Islands Quotes - Page 20

• Transcendental Meditation gives me an island of calm
  in the midst of so much turbulence.

  Paul McCartney

  Giving, Meditation, Calm

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• I would not be cured if the price of the cure was that I must leave the island and give up my work I am perfectly resigned to my lot. Do not feel sorry for me.

  Father Damien

  Giving Up, Sorry, Cures

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• Every one must be struck with astonishment, when he first beholds one of these vast rings of coral-rock, often many leagues in diameter, here and there surmounted by a low verdant island with dazzling white shores, bathed on the outside by the foaming breakers of the ocean, and on the inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which, from reflection, is of a bright but pale green color.

  Charles Darwin

  Nature, Ocean, Reflection

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 7: The Geology of the Voyage of the H. M. S. Beagle, Part I: Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs”, p.3, NYU Press

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• Most agreeable are the memories of events and labours, connected with the cruise:- of companions in travel, ... of coral islands with their groves, and beautiful life, above and below the waters, ... of lofty precipices, richly draped, even the sternest fronts made to smile and be glad, as delights the gay tropics, and alive with waterfalls, gliding, leaping, or plunging, on their way down from the giddy heights, and, as they go, playing out and in amid the foliage...

  James Dwight Dana

  Beautiful, Nature, Memories

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• Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Women, Moon, Roots

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tehanu”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

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• The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Real, Men, Magic

  "The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Chapter "Taboo and Metaphor", 1925.

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• Planet Earth is our shared island, let us join forces to protect it

  Ban Ki-moon

  Earth, Force, Planets

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• The Order of the Arrow is a thing of the outdoors rather than the indoors. It was born in an island wilderness. It needs the sun and rain, the woods and the plains, the waters and the starlit sky.

  E. Urner Goodman

  Rain, Order, Sky

  62 Copy quote

• Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world.

  Mao Zedong

  Rain, Ocean, Moving

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• Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west.

  Alfred Kazin

  Running, New York, Ocean

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• Situated on an island which I think it will one day cover, it rises like Venice from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.

  Frances Trollope

  New York, Thinking, Sea

  Frances Trollope (2014). “Domestic Manners of the Americans”, p.225, Oxford University Press

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• Iran is an island of stability in a turbulent corner of the world

  Jimmy Carter

  Israel, Iran, World

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• At first I threw my weight upon my heels, as one does naturally in a boot, and was a good deal bruised, but after a few hours I learned the natural walk of man, and could follow my guide in any portion of the island.

  John Millington Synge

  Journey, Men, High Heels

  John Millington Synge (1999). “The Aran Islands”, p.25, Northwestern University Press

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• If I'm on location on some island, we usually get up at four in the morning to set up. By seven thirty, we're on the beach working until noon, then we rest. It's not exactly a vacation.

  Daniela Pestova

  Beach, Morning, Vacation

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• Happiness is actually found in simple things, such as taking my nephew around the island by bicycle or seeing the stars at night. We go to coffee shops or see airplanes land at the airport.

  Andrea Hirata

  Stars, Coffee, Airplane

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• And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said-and she had the Sight-Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living! And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels-or devils.

  Kerry Greenwood

  Wise, Grief, Angel

  Kerry Greenwood (2011). “Cocaine Blues”, p.60, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• She tapped on the window with her embossed hairbrush. They were too far off to hear. The drone of the trees was in their ears; the chirp of birds; other incidents of garden life, inaudible, invisible to her in the bedroom, absorbed them. Isolated on a green island, hedged about with snowdrops, laid with a counterpane of puckered silk, the innocent island floated under her window. Only George lagged behind.

  Virginia Woolf

  Garden, Bird, Tree

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.933, Wordsworth Editions

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• A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; - such is our personality.

  Cyril Connolly

  Weed, Lying, Flower

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before - but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever. As they drew near to it, and saw the willow trees that bent over the water-edge and heard the sharp call of moorhens that scuttled off, the children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on.

  Enid Blyton

  Children, Swimming, Animal

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• He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

  Josephine Tey

  Heart, Games, Rivers

  Josephine Tey (2013). “The Daughter of Time”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The Shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Light, Air, Blue

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.155, Broadview Press

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• In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Bird, Library, Rooms

  Rebecca Solnit (2013). “The Faraway Nearby”, p.116, Granta Books

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• School of Rock. The best music school anywhere. This whole idea of getting kids not just taking lessons and learning notes and chords, but learning songs and playing with other young musicians, and getting out on stage... I was so impressed that my daughter Cheyenne goes to School of Rock on Long Island.

  Dee Snider

  Daughter, Song, School

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• Not in Utopia, -- subterranean fields, --Or some secreted island, Heaven knows whereBut in the very world, which is the worldOf all of us, -- the place where in the endWe find our happiness, or not at all

  William Wordsworth

  Heaven, World, Fields

  'The Prelude' (1850) bk. 11, l. 140

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• For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.

  Tom Clancy

  Memories, Struggle, Fall

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