Creeks Quotes - Page 3

I grew up on the edge of a national park in Canada - timberwolves, creeks, snow drifts.

Dan Aykroyd

Snow, National Parks, Canada

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Clambering up the Cold Mountain path, The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass. The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain The pine sings, but there's no wind. Who can leap the world's ties And sit with me among the white clouds?

Gary Snyder

Rain, Clouds, Wind

Gary Snyder (2010). “Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems”, p.46, Counterpoint Press

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The government tells us we need flood control and comes to straighten the creek in our pasture. The engineer on the job tells us the creek is now able to carry off more flood water, but in the process we have lost our old willows where the owl hooted on a winter night and under which the cows switched flies in the noon shade. We lost the little marshy spot where our fringed gentians bloomed.

Aldo Leopold

Jobs, Winter, Night

Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.165, Oxford University Press

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If everything that is happening in the world is traceable to our inability to understand what is happening in the world. If there is such a thing as original sin, it's the human capacity to get everything wrong, right from the beginning and all the way up to now, and that's what the old storytellers have been telling us, including the Creek Indians who told this story along with every other tribe on earth.

Gerald Hausman

World, Earth, Way

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The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

Mark Twain

Funny, Humorous, Cat

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.706, Jazzybee Verlag

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... for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents-many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy"-show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

Michael Grunwald

Years, Toxic Waste, Environmental

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Hydrologists have demonstrated that the meanderings of a creek are a necessary part of the hydrologic functioning. The flood plain belongs to the river. The ecologist sees clearly that for similar reasons we can get along with less channel improvement on Round River.

Aldo Leopold

Rivers, Water, Environmental

Aldo Leopold (1966). “A Sand County almanac: With other essays on conservation from Round River”

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...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.

Toni Morrison

Night, Thinking, Sky

Toni Morrison (1992). “Jazz”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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Call them pros, call them mercenaries - but in fact they are just grown - up kids who have learned on the frozen creek or flooded corner lot that hockey is the greatest thrill of all.

Lester Patrick

Kids, Hockey, Nhl

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When we are relaxed and reasonable content, we are naturally wise. We accept that life is unpredictable, unreliable. We say jokingly or philosophically, "Nothing is sure except death and taxes," or "God willing and the creek don't rise," reminding each other that, notwithstanding the level of planning, we are continually dealing with being surprised. We get startled. We recover. We are disappointed. We adjust. Mostly-with Wisdom intact-we manage.

Sylvia Boorstein

Wise, Wisdom, Levels

Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D. (2007). “Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake: Practicing the Perfections of the Heart--The Buddhist Path of Kindness”, p.69, Ballantine Books

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The Niger Delta is an occupied territory. Citizens raise their hands in the creeks each time they see the military

Nnimmo Bassey

Military, Hands, Citizens

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When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

Mary Oliver

Summer, Running, Dark

Mary Oliver (1992). “New and Selected Poems”, Beacon Press (MA)

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What pretty bright trout there are in this bold rock creek! It would full be called a river in England, and so it is!

Thaddeus Norris

Fishing, Rivers, Lakes

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To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself

James Madison

Government, Land, House

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My role models were always the Pacinos and the Oldmans, the guys who get dirty with their characters, and I arrived in L.A. during the big boom of 'Dawson's Creek.' I was getting cast as the boy next door, or the friend of the jock. I thought, 'Did I really have to do all that studying?'

Gabriel Mann

Dirty, Character, Boys

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.

Annie Dillard

Running, Believe, Book

Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.69, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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Lay down these words Before your mind like rocks. placed solid, by hands In choice of place, set Before the body of the mind in space and time: Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall riprap of things: Cobble of milky way. straying planets, These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging saddles -- and rocky sure-foot trails. The worlds like an endless four-dimensional Game of Go. ants and pebbles In the thin loam, each rock a word a creek-washed stone Granite: ingrained with torment of fire and weight Crystal and sediment linked hot all change, in thoughts, As well as things.

Gary Snyder

Wall, Fire, Space

Gary Snyder (1992). “No nature: new and selected poems”, Pantheon

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Water is a commodity not by any means to be found everywhere...When found, it is more than likely to be bad, being either from a bitter alkaline pool, or from a hole in a creek, so muddy that it can only be called liquid by courtesy.

Theodore Roosevelt

Mean, Water, Liquid

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The thing that bothers me the most is the recklessness and greed of the local ranchers, who run too many cattle back here, choking with waste the creek that runs through my property. There's certain times of day that the cowboys like to send them turds down the river. Them f**kers piss me off. if you gotta mess up the ecology of the world in order to raise a bunch of cows, well eat somethin else. I'm not a fan of the cowboys.

Merle Haggard

Running, Cowboy, Order

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So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone… The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled.

E. L. Doctorow

Pyramids, May, Stones

E.L. Doctorow (2010). “Ragtime: A Novel”, p.113, Random House

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Then the sun broke above the crest of the hills and the entire countryside looked soaked in blood, the arroyos deep in shadow, the cones of dead volcanoes stark and biscuit-colored against the sky. I could smell pinion trees, wet sage, woodsmoke, cattle in the pastures, and creek water that had melted from snow. I could smell the way the country probably was when it was only a dream in the mind of God.

James Lee Burke

Dream, Country, Volcanoes

James Lee Burke (2007). “Jesus Out to Sea: Stories”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

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I am beginning to understand that the stream the scientists are studying is not just a little creek. It's a river of energy that moves across regions in great geographic cycles. Here, life and death are only different points on a continuum. The stream flows in a circle through time and space, turning death into life across coastal ecosystems, as it has for more than a million years. But such streams no longer flow in the places where most of us live.

Kathleen Moore

Moving, Space, Years

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I have seen salmon swimming upstream to spawn even with their eyes pecked out. Even as they are dying, as their flesh is falling away from their spines, I have seen salmon fighting to protect their nests. I have seen them push up creeks so small that they rammed themselves across the gravel. I have seen them swim upstream with huge chunks bitten out of their bodies by bears. Salmon are incredibly driven to spawn. They will not give up. This gives me hope.

Kathleen Moore

Giving Up, Fall, Eye

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If the U.S. succeeds in destroying the revolution, my status will be like that of most Cubans: I'll be up a creek without a paddle. It will be devastating for people worldwide who believe in justice.

Assata Shakur

Believe, Justice, People

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Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time..."

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Rain, Thinking, Wind

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