Ponds Quotes - Page 3

• I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Sea, Ducks

  11 Copy quote

• As our listeners will know, unless they've taken refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or somewhere similar, You-Know-Who's strategy of remaining in the shadows is creating a nice little climate of panic.

  J. K. Rowling

  Nice, Taken, Garden

  10 Copy quote

• Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fences, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our own hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

  John Steinbeck

  Strong, Fall, Angel

  31 Copy quote

• Boredom reigns on all levels. The rain is a welcome change. I have seen the pond swell and the creek surge. I press my palm against the glass, imagining the drops on my skin, imagining where they started out, where they will go, feeling them like a river, rushing, combining, becoming something greater than how they started out.

  Mary E. Pearson

  Rain, Glasses, Rivers

  Mary E. Pearson (2009). “The Adoration of Jenna Fox”, p.45, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I often think that we are like the carp swimming contentedly in that pond. We live out our lives in our own "pond," confident that our universe consists of only the familiar and the visible. We smugly refuse to admit that parallel universes or dimensions can exist next to ours, just beyond our grasp. If our scientists invent concepts like forces, it is only because they cannot visualize the invisible vibrations that fill the empty space around us. Some scientists sneer at the mention of higher dimensions because they cannot be conveniently measured in the laboratory.

  Michio Kaku

  Swimming, Thinking, Space

  12 Copy quote

• Anytime that is ‘betwixt and between’ or transitional is the faeries’ favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational.

  Brian Froud

  Garden, Lakes, Land

  16 Copy quote

• Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government.

  Graham Chapman

  Lying, Government, Holy Grail

  "Fictional character: Dennis". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", www.imdb.com. March 14, 1975.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew.

  Ray Bradbury

  Stars, Spring, Twilight

  Ray Bradbury (2013). “A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories”, p.12, Harper Collins

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Breaking the silence
  Of an ancient pond,
  A frog jumped into water -
  A deep resonance.

  Matsuo Basho

  Water, Silence, Frogs

  "The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches". Book by Matsuo Bashō, 1966.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The snow has left the cottage top;
  The thatch moss grows in brighter green;
  And eaves in quick succession drop,
  Where grinning icicles have been,
  Pit-patting with a pleasant noise
  In tubs set by the cottage door;
  While duck and geese, with happy joys,
  Plunge in the yard pond brimming over.
  The sun peeps through the window pane:
  Which children mark with laughing eye,
  And in the wet street steal again
  To tell each other spring is night.

  John Clare

  Children, Spring, Eye

  John Clare (1827). “The Shepherd's Calendar: With Village Stories and Other Poems”, p.20

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Ducks, Safety

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.153, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.

  Tom Robbins

  Aquariums, Swim, Soul

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.194, Bantam

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are a sort of men, whose visages
  Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
  And do a willful stillness entertain,
  With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
  Of wisdom, gravity profound conceit;
  As who should say, I am sir Oracle,
  And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!

  William Shakespeare

  Wisdom, Dog, Men

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 88

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light

  Mary Oliver

  Eye, Light, Wings

  55 Copy quote

• It's a poor frog that doesn't praise his own pond! - Donnie McClurkin

  Donnie McClurkin

  Frogs, Praise, Poor

  11 Copy quote

• Today I saw a guy who looked like me in a funhouse mirror. He looked at me like, Hey, that's how I look reflected in the pond!

  Dana Gould

  Mirrors, Guy, Looks

  7 Copy quote

• The ultimate source of energy, the sun is ready to set. The leaves of the blooming lotus flower in the pond are losing their lustre. A bumblebee, sitting on that lotus is enjoying the romantic pleasure and murmuring passionate songs.

  Manmohan Acharya

  Song, Flower, Energy

  "Gita Milindam (Song of the Bumblebee)". Book by Manmohan Acharya, July 12, 2010.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Are you nervous about no longer being a big fish in a small pond?

  Lisi Harrison

  Big Fish, Nervous, Bigs

  18 Copy quote

• Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

  Anne Lamott

  Expectations, Attention, Littles

  60 Copy quote

• Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

  Sherwood Smith

  Memories, Reality, Sight

  Sherwood Smith (1997). “Crown Duel”, p.182, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the strangest thing probably is when I went to Japan, and I don't know what the hell I was eating, but there was this one thing that seemed to be in a lot of soups and things there - I always called it pond scum. It looked exactly like the green stuff that floats on top of a pond. I would say, "Oh my God, this has pond scum in it!" I would eat it, to be polite, because we were usually with Japanese people and I didn't want to gag or spit it out or anything. And I still don't know what it was.

  Cassandra Peterson

  Thinking, Japan, People

  "Elvira on her date with Elvis and the fish recipe she got from Vincent Price". Interview with Katie Rife, aux.avclub.com. October 5, 2016.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

  Michael Palin

  Lying, Government, Holy Grail

  "Fictional character: Dennis". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", 1975.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

  W. G. Sebald

  Dream, Reality, Lakes

  29 Copy quote

• What is life unless you're having a good time? I don't really have a plan; I just try to dip my toes in different ponds.

  Douglas Booth

  Trying, Different, Toes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Lying, Mirrors, Air

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Studies in Pessimism: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.30, 谷月社

  9 Copy quote

  Show source