Islands Quotes - Page 19

• Put any two people together and each will seek ways of feeling superior to the other. If a ship went down in the Pacific and a single sailor managed to swim to a desert island, would he be pleased to see, ten minutes later, another sailor emerging from the surf? Quite possibly - but only if the new arrival accepted that the first man was now a landed aristocrat while he himself was an illegal immigrant.

  Michael Foley

  Men, Two, People

  Michael Foley (2012). “Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: ferocity on a scale only gods can summon. It hurls itself at the island, sending spray right over the top of the lighthouse, biting pieces off the cliff. And the sound is a roaring of a beast whose anger knows no limits. Those are the nights the light is needed most.

  M. L. Stedman

  Ocean, Night, Light

  "The Light Between Oceans". Book by M. L. Stedman, 2012.

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• The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm - the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you're wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.

  M. L. Stedman

  Light, Wind, Voice

  M. L. Stedman (2012). “The Light Between Oceans”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

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• The Welsh are not like any other people in Britain, and they know how separate they are. They are the Celts, the tough little wine-dark race who were the original possessors of the island, who never mixed with the invaders coming later from the east, but were slowly driven into the western mountains.

  Laurie Lee

  Wine, Dark, Race

  Laurie Lee (2015). “I Can't Stay Long”, p.89, Penguin UK

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• We're all trying to get to the same island — whether you swim, fly, surf, or skydive, it doesn't matter. What matters is when the red light goes on.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  What Matters, Light, Swim

  "How To Get Fired From Your Own Movie And Survive" by E.A. Hanks, www.buzzfeed.com. May 2, 2013.

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• Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.

  William James

  Ocean, Sea, Roots

  William James (1986). “Essays in Psychical Research”, p.374, Harvard University Press

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• Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as drift-wood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered; and this spring-tide or current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song.

  Lord Dunsany

  Song, Spring, Twilight

  Lord Dunsany (2015). “The Book of Wonder”, p.4, Booklassic

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• Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Ocean, Book, Oasis

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1987). “Next to Mother's Milk--: An Engelhard Lecture on the Book”

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• For me, a desert island is no tragedy, neither is a deserted planet.

  Peter Wessel Zapffe

  Tragedy, Desert, Planets

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• Id like to live in the Greek islands

  Paul Wesley

  Greek

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• More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!

  Walt Whitman

  Beautiful, New York, Sunshine

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.683, NYU Press

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• Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Men, Doe

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.49, Penguin

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• You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Creating, Desert

  The Paris Review Interview, Fall 1965.

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• When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.

  Jodie Foster

  Lonely, Growing Up, Book

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• The one-handed palmer can always reach higher, they say. They may be right, but the result is that nearly every line-out is like a tropical island - all waving palms.

  Vivian Jenkins

  Lines, May, Rugby

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• The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica.

  Frederic Farrar

  Men, Judging, Decision

  Frederic William Farrar (1877). “Seekers After God”, p.86

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• I know enough about the moon to know how unpleasant and inhospitable it is. . . . I know enough about Mars to know that you can't live there, you can't settle it. Mars and the moon are two ugly islands. So then, you say, what's the point of going to them? The point is to be able to say I've been there, I've set foot on them, and I can go further to look for beautiful islands.

  Wally Schirra

  Beautiful, Moon, Two

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• The average millionaire can't tell you who got thrown off the island last night.

  Dave Ramsey

  Success, Night, Average

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• Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.

  Nicholas Stern

  New York, Years, Sea

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• We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

  Thomas W. Horton

  Running, Growing Up, Distance

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• Pamalican Island is a wonderful story told with the sparkle of fun and a true understanding of the magic of childhood. A magical journey for any child who dreams of desert islands.

  Raffaella Barker

  Dream, Fun, Children

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• And I've shot in Prince Edward Island winters, I mean, I've shot in some intense, intense temperatures.

  Ellen Page

  Mean, Winter, Temperature

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• I never watched 'Harper's Island.'

  Dave Foley

  Harper

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• Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Running, Oil, Ozone

  "Top Gear", October 31, 2004.

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• Right now I'd love to be sitting on a Greek island somewhere because of being Greek American, eating great octopus salad and some fantastic lamb. Or sipping a little ouzo. I think the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest... Lots of nuts, vegetables, fruits, fresh fish, lean meats, yogurt.

  Cat Cora

  Thinking, Vegetables, Nuts

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