Wave Quotes - Page 26

• What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Life, Pain, Passion

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1841). “Life and literary remains of L.E.L. [ed.] by L. Blanchard”

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• Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.

  Victor Hugo

  Hands, Honor, Shadow

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• Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.

  Edith Wharton

  Fiction, Narrative, Moments

  Edith Wharton (2014). “The Writing of Fiction”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism.

  Lucille Ball

  Success, Taken, Goal

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• What is harder than stone?
  What more soft than water?
  Nevertheless hard though the rock be, it is hollowed by the wave.

  Ovid

  Rocks, Water, Stones

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• He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
  Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,
  What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
  He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
  Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave;
  Whence those impetuous currents in the main
  Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why
  The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
  As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.

  John Armstrong

  Sea, Heaven, Mind

  John Armstrong, John Dyer (1858). “The Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green: With Memoirs, and Critical Dissertations”, p.37

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• And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.

  May Sarton

  Song, Stars, Grief

  "The Phoenix Again" l. 17 (1988)

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• A winning wave, (deserving note.)
  In the tempestuous petticote,
  A careless shoe-string, in whose tye
  I see a wilde civility,--
  Doe more bewitch me than when art
  Is too precise in every part.

  Robert Herrick

  Art, Winning, Shoes

  Robert Herrick, “Delight In Disorder”

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• The wretch that fears to drown, will break through flames;
  Or, in his dread of flames, will plunge in waves.
  When eagles are in view, the screaming doves
  Will cower beneath the feet of man for safety.

  Colley Cibber

  Fear, Men, Feet

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• The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness.

  Lucy Larcom

  Spring, Flower, Wind

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• A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sea, Shapes, Form

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Allsop (1836). “Letters, conversations, and recollections of S. T. Coleridge: in two volumes”, p.127

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• In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.

  John Selden

  Fall, Cutting, Thinking

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• I hear the tread of pioneers
  Of nations yet to be,
  The first low wash of waves where soon
  Shall roll a human sea.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Sea, Firsts, Pioneers

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1857*). “Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.141

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• God's miracles are to be found in nature itself; the wind and waves, the wood that becomes a tree - all of these are explained biologically, but behind them is the hand of God.

  Ronald Reagan

  Nature, Hands, Wind

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• Here are my strong reservations about the wave of computer networks. They isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They undercut our schools and libraries.

  Clifford Stoll

  Strong, Creativity, School

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• Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand
  Waves o'er the world, and beckons us away.
  Who shall resist the summons?

  Thomas Love Peacock

  Death, Hands, World

  Thomas Love Peacock (1931). “The Works of Thomas Love Peacock: Poems and plays. 1931”

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• What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

  Boris Pasternak

  Writing, Symphony, People

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• Tranquillity consisteth in a steadiness of the mind; and how can that vessel that is beaten upon by contrary waves and winds, and tottereth to either part, be said to keep a steady course? Resolution is the only mother of security.

  Joseph Hall

  Mother, Wind, Mind

  Joseph Hall, Philip Wynter (1863). “Works”, p.37

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• The grass is waking in the ground, / Soon it will rise and blow in waves - / How can it have the heart to sway / Over the graves, / New graves?

  Sara Teasdale

  Grief, Heart, Blow

  Sara Teasdale (1915). “Rivers to the Sea”

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• People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. ... I'd found the one true, enduring romance of my life.

  Bette Davis

  Cheer, People, Romance

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• The wind breathes not, and the wave
  Walks softly as above a grave.

  Philip James Bailey

  Wind, Breathe, Graves

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.143

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• The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.

  John Ruskin

  Nature, Sea, Two

  John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.55

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• Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal.

  Rachel Carson

  Ocean, School, Autumn

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sea Around Us”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated.

  Anna Quindlen

  Beach, Pain, Recovery

  Anna Quindlen (2003). “Object Lessons: One True Thing; Black and Blue”

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• Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Mind, Causes, Calm

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.18, Shambhala Publications

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