Rivers Quotes - Page 31

• The logs of wood which move down the river together Are driven apart by every wave. Such inevitable parting Should not be the cause of misery.

  Akkineni Nagarjuna

  Moving, Together, Woods

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• This Maya is everywhere. It is terrible. Yet we have to work through it. The man who says that he will work when the world has become all good and then he will enjoy bliss is as likely to succeed as the man who sits beside the Ganga and says, "I will ford the river when all the water has run into the ocean."

  Swami Vivekananda

  Running, Ocean, Men

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.32, editionNEXT.com

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• The Tao can't be perceived. Smaller than an electron, it contains uncountable galaxies. If powerful men and women could remain centered in the Tao, all things would be in harmony. The world would become a paradise. All people would be at peace, and the law would be written in their hearts. When you have names and forms, know that they are provisional. When you have institutions, know where their functions should end. Knowing when to stop, you can avoid any danger. All things end in the Tao as rivers flow into the sea.

  Laozi

  Powerful, Heart, Men

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• Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sleep, Winter, Numbers

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• Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Whales, Sea

  Moby Dick ch. 135 (1851)

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• Not to wax nostalgic about the 1970s, but back then people got upset when they saw injustice. They got tired of seeing our air, land and water polluted. They were shocked when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was polluted so badly it caught fire. And on one great day 20 million Americans marched all across this land. Politicians had no choice but to take notice.

  John F. Kerry

  Tired, Fire, Air

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• Torrent of light and river of air,
  Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen,
  Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
  Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Stars, Science, Light

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “My Complete Poetical Works (Annotated Edition)”, p.844, Jazzybee Verlag

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• You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Funny, Hands, Sailing

  Jerome K. Jerome (2014). “Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.263, Diderot Publishing

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• The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Blood, Knives, Mirrors

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.168, Penguin

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• Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of springwater or take in sunset like a supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

  Rumi

  Sunset, Sleep, Dawn

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.98, Lulu.com

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• Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

  Aristotle

  People, Environmental, Boundaries

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• We cannot make rivers whole unless we wholly understand them.

  Rob Brown

  Whole

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• Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy.

  Edward Abbey

  Night, Space, Joy

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• To have some parts flowing free again . . . with deer grazing on its banks . . . ducks and geese raising their young in the backwaters . . . eddies and twists and turns for canoeists . . . and fishing opportunities such as Lewis and Clark enjoyed . . . would be the finest possible tribute to the men of the Expedition, and a priceless gift for our children.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Children, Opportunity, Men

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• You don't need it, but will you take some advice from a Californian who's been around for a while? Cherish these rivers. Witness for them. Enjoy their unimprovable purpose as you sense it, and let those rivers that you never visit comfort you with the assurance that they are there, doing wonderfully what they have always done.

  David R. Brower

  Advice, Environmental, Comfort

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• Keep your rivers flowing as they will, and you will continue to know the most important of all freedoms-the boundless scope of the human mind to contemplate wonders, and to begin to understand their meaning.

  David R. Brower

  Mind, Environmental, Important

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• Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

  Robert Burns

  Fall, White, Snow

  'Tam o' Shanter' (1791) l. 59

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• A river is the cosiest of friends. You must love it and live with it before you can know it.

  George William Curtis

  Environmental, Knows

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• The stream sings a subdued music, a scarcely audible lilt, faint and fluid syllables not quite said. It slips away into its future, where it already is, and flows steadily forth from up the canyon, a fountain of rumors from regions known to it and not to me.

  John Daniel

  Rumor, Environmental, Flow

  John Daniel (2009). “The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature”, p.67, Counterpoint

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• We don't tend to ask where a lake comes from. It lies before us, contained and complete, tantalizing in its depth but not its origin. A river is a different kind of mystery, a mystery of distance and becoming, a mystery of source. Touch its fluent body and you touch far places. You touch a story that must end somewhere but cannot stop telling itself, a story that is always just beginning.

  John Daniel

  Distance, Lying, Lakes

  John Daniel (2009). “The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature”, p.67, Counterpoint

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• Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Environmental, Each Month, Ornaments

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1849). “Nature”, p.17

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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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• An unspoiled river is a very rare thing in this Nation today. Their flow and vitality have been harnessed by dams and too often they have been turned into open sewers by communities and by industries. It makes us all very fearful that all rivers will go this way unless somebody acts now to try to balance our river development.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Community, Balance, Environmental

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1970). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969”, p.1001, Best Books on

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• A Montana statue holds that a river has a right to overwhelm its banks and inundate its floodplain. Well, that's interesting, because it's not a right that we assign to the river. The river has earned it through centuries of deluging and shaping the floodplain, and the floodplain has a right to its rampaging river. They've earned their rights through a kind of reciprocal action.

  Daniel Kemmis

  Rights, Interesting, Environmental

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• If our salmon are not healthy, then our watersheds are not healthy-and if our watersheds our not healthy, then we have truly squandered our heritage and mortgaged our future.

  John Kitzhaber

  Healthy, Environmental, Salmon

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