Oar Quotes - Page 2

• The ship's boards were still sticky with new resin. We leaned over the railing to wave our last farewell, the sun-warm wood pressed against our bellies. The sailors heaved up the anchor, square and chalky with barnacles, and loosened the sails. Then they took their seats at the oars that fringed the boat like eyelashes, waiting for the count. The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy.

  Madeline Miller

  Farewell, Squares, Eyelashes

  Madeline Miller (2011). “The Song of Achilles”, p.179, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following.

  Samuel Johnson

  Distance, Hands, Effort

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1820). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: A New Edition in Twelve Volumes, to which is Prefixed, an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq. Containing Adventurer and Rasselas”, p.186

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• On the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar.

  Lord Byron

  Light, Ears, Suspended

  Lord Byron, Lord George Gordon Byron (2013). “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, p.111, Cambridge University Press

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• Mental purity will come through constant chanting of the divine name. This is the simplest way. You are trying to cross the ocean of transmigration, the cycle of birth and death. The mantra is the oar of the boat; it is the instrument you use to cross the samsara of your restless mind, with its unending thought waves. The mantra can also be compared to a ladder that you climb to reach the heights of God realization.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Ocean, Restless Mind, Names

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• And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept their time.

  Andrew Marvell

  Fall, Way, Rowing

  Andrew Marvell, Nigel Smith (2007). “The Poems of Andrew Marvell”, p.58, Pearson Education

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• This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought Should contrive our fees to pilfer, on who for his native land Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.

  Aristophanes

  Men, Grieving, Hands

  Aristophanes (1960). “Aristophanes with the English translation of Benjamin Bickley Rogers”

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• We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Years, Water, People

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval”, p.131

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• From the Sun I learned this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Compassion, Sea, Tears

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.190, Penguin

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• Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen Or the golden-haired sons of kings, Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail

  Kathleen Raine

  Kings, Son, Dark

  Kathleen Raine (1989). “Selected Poems”, p.74, SteinerBooks

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• You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Currents, Ifs

  "Kris Kristofferson: What I've Learned" by Scott Carrier, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• So to the lyre of Orpheus they struck with their oars, The furious water of the sea, and the surge broke into waves. Here and there the dark brine gushed with foam, Roaring terribly through the strength of the mighty men.

  Barry S. Strauss

  Dark, Men, Sea

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• From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sea, Broken, Gold

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1931). “The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche”

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• As Einstein himself pointed out. He said we’re like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can’t see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it’s there.

  Jack Finney

  Past, Rivers, Curves

  Jack Finney (2014). “Time and Again”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• Everything that we want is downstream... And you don't have even have to turn the boat and paddle downstream, just let go of the oars, the current will carry you.

  Esther Hicks

  Letting Go, Want, Boat

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• Mankind owns four things that are no good at sea: rudder, anchor, oars and the fear of going down.

  Antonio Machado

  Fear, Ocean, Anchors

  Antonio Machado (2011). “Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado”, p.113, Wesleyan University Press

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• Most people are rowing against the current of life. Instead of turning the boat around, all they need to do is let go of the oars.

  Esther Hicks

  Letting Go, People, Needs

  "Be Flexible!" by Mike Robbins, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 27, 2010.

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• Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Forever, Speak, Affair

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

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• By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the
  light chariot, and establish love.
  [Lat., Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur;
  Arte levis currus, arte regendus Amor.]

  Ovid

  Art, Moving, Light

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• I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them. My philosophy is to stay as close as possible to what's happening. If I can't solve something, how the hell can I expect my managers to.

  Harold Geneen

  Philosophy, Believe, People

  "Harold S. Geneen, 87, Dies; Nurtured ITT" by Kenneth N. Gilpin, www.nytimes.com. November 23, 1997.

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• The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.

  John Muir

  Morning, Stars, Moving

  John Muir, Terry Gifford (1996). “John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings”, p.203, The Mountaineers Books

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• Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.

  Salman Rushdie

  Memories, Father, Eye

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• The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them...and royally squander their lives with her.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Song, Air, Sirens

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• The feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying, as if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon.

  Barry S. Strauss

  Baseball, Workout, Wings

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• To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward.

  Theodore Roethke

  Rowing, Boat, Breathe

  Theodore Roethke, “The Shape Of The Fire”

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• You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.

  Samuel Johnson

  Thinking, Drs, Littles

  Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, James Boswell (1804). “The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd”, p.14

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