Driftwood Quotes

• Like a plank of driftwood Tossed on the watery main, Another plank encountered, Meets, touches, parts again; So tossed, and drifting ever, On life's unresting sea, Men meet, and greet, and sever, Parting eternally.

  Edwin Arnold

  Men, Sea, Drifting

  Edwin Arnold (2015). “Collected Works of Edwin Arnold: Buddhism and Hinduism Studies, Poetry & Plays (Unabridged): The Essence of Buddhism, Light of the World, The Light of Asia, The Song Celestial, Indian Poetry, Hindu Literature, The Japanese Wife, Death--And Afterwards…”, p.497, e-artnow

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• A life that hasn't a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.

  David Sarnoff

  Children, Plans, Definite

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• Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

  Haruki Murakami

  Thinking, Pieces, Sometimes

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, p.6, Random House

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• Like driftwood spares which meet and pass Upon the boundless ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas! Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.

  Matthew Arnold

  Ocean, Men, Sea

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• I think one of the first things to go as people's lives start to go down is their dreams. Dreams should be the last thing to go - dreams are the things you go down with. If you're left clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, I'd put on it the word dreams.

  Kevin Costner

  Dream, Ocean, Thinking

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• We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

  Pema Chodron

  Beautiful, Hurt, Children

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.65, Shambhala Publications

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• Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see. Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

  Rumi

  Beach, Powerful, Roots

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• Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

  Rumi

  Heart, Spirit, Window

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• I will not go on, I thought. I won't. I will throw my soul to the wind and blow into a thousand pieces. I will wash up on a shore somewhere like bleached and broken driftwood. I will dry out in the sun until I-and any gift I ever had-shrivel into the sand.

  Janette Rallison

  Blow, Wind, Broken

  Janette Rallison (2009). “Just One Wish”, p.149, Penguin

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• We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beach, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.242, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Choicelessness brings you to the whole. Choice is always of the part, necessarily so. And then one person goes from one choice to another, becomes a driftwood - from this bank to another bank, from that bank to this bank. This is how you have been moving, down the ages, for so many lives

  Rajneesh

  Moving, Choices, Age

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• We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.

  Otto Neurath

  Taken, Sea, Support

  Otto Neurath, Marie Neurath, Robert Sonné Cohen (1973). “Empiricism and sociology”

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• Unless created as freestanding works, quotations resemble "found" art. They are analogous, say, to a piece of driftwood identified as formally interesting enough to be displayed in an art museum or to a weapon moved from an anthropological to an artistic display.... The presenter of found art, whether material or verbal, has become a sort of artist. He has not made the object, but he has made it as art.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Art, Museums, Interesting

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• The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.

  Myrtle Reed

  Summer, Rivers, Rocks

  Myrtle Reed (2017). “Old Rose and Silver”, p.58, Lindhardt og Ringhof

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• A career, like a business, must be budgeted. When it is necessary, the budget can be adjusted to meet changing conditions. A life that hasn't a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.

  David Sarnoff

  Careers, Plans, Definite

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• Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

  George Leonard

  Branches, Stuff, Holy

  George Leonard (2009). “The Silent Pulse”, p.112, Gibbs Smith

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• I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together.

  Kurt Schwitters

  Together, Buttons, Junk

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• Shadow boxes become poetic theater or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime. The fragile, shimmering globules become the shimmering but more enduring planets—a connotation of moon and tides—the association of water less subtle, as when driftwood pieces make up a proscenium to set off the dazzling white of sea foam and billowy cloud crystallized in a pipe of fancy.

  Joseph Cornell

  Moon, Sea, White

  Joseph Cornell, Pasadena Art Museum (1967*). “An exhibition of works”

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• Do not think I do not realise what I am doing. I am making a composition using the following elements: the winter beach; the winter moon; the ocean; the women; the pine trees; the riders; the driftwood; the shells; the shapes of darkness and the shapes of water; and the refuse. These are all inimical to my loneliness because of their indifference to it. Out of these pieces of inimical indifference, I intend to represent the desolate smile of winter which, as you must have gathered, is the smile I wear.

  Angela Carter

  Beach, Loneliness, Ocean

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• Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Falling In Love, Art, Book

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• Belgarath and Garion effortlessly hurdled over the driftwood and loped off into the fog. "It's going to be a wet day," Garion noted soundlessly as he ran alongside the great silver wolf. "Your fur won't melt." "I know, but my paws get cold when they're wet." "I'll have Durnik make you some little booties." "That would be absolutely ridiculous, Grandfather," Garion said indignantly.

  David Eddings

  Fog, Grandfather, Booty

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• Nice creepy reptile,” Frank said, very aware of the driftwood in his coat pocket. “Nice poisonous, fire-breathing reptile.

  Rick Riordan

  Nice, Fire, Breathing

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• We are shoulder to shoulder due to the size of the cab, and if Gratton is made of flour and potatoes, Sean is made of stone and driftwood and possibly those prickly anemones that sometimes wash up on shore.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Size, Stones, Potatoes

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “The Scorpio Races”, p.134, Scholastic UK

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• You see something you like?

  Richelle Mead

  Rose, Vampire, Roza

  Richelle Mead (2007). “Vampire Academy”, p.121, Penguin

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