Undertow Quotes

• Perhaps the relevant truth is that we all find ourselves in temporal currents and that unless you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble.

  Joseph O'Neill

  Years, Too Late, Attention

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• A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.

  Marguerite Young

  Book, Mean, Writing

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• The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.

  Cyril Connolly

  Beach, Art, Genius

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• Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Powerful, Past

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• The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him--a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured--captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Reality, May

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.102, Random House

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• Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Gauges, Currents, Music Is

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2088, Delphi Classics

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• Undertow" "I set out one night When the tide was low There were signs in the sky But I did not know I'd be caught in the grip Of the undertow Ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

  Leonard Cohen

  Beach, Children, Hate

  Song: Undertow, Album: Dear Heather, 2004

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• They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,--how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beach, Believe, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.806, e-artnow

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• Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn - and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb.

  Muriel Barbery

  War, Sleep, Flames

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, August 31, 2006.

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• remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism.

  Lucille Ball

  Success, Taken, Goal

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• I yearned to get better; I told myself I was getting better. In fact, the depression was still there, like a powerful undertow. Sometimes it grabbed me, yanked me under; other times, I swam free.

  Tracy Thompson

  Depression, Powerful, Get Better

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• There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow- that, in short, we are all going.

  John Green

  Sea, Parent, Wade

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.94, Penguin

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• I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew.

  Margaret E. Barber

  Ocean, Sea, Fathom

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• pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (...) the beginning

  Saul Williams

  Italian, Sharks, Blood

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• Well, you're either lovers or you're wanting to be lovers or you're trying not to be lovers so you can be friends, but any way you look at it, sex is always looming in the picture like a shadow, like an undertow.

  Andrew Schneider

  Sex, Shadow, Trying

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• The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
  Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
  In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
  Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Winter, Long, Tree

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.4394, Delphi Classics

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• I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts. Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's stream.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Night, Echoes

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2088, Delphi Classics

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• Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

  Sarah Dessen

  Swim, Drifting, Dreamland

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “Dreamland”, p.167, Penguin

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• If you are not thinking for yourself, someone else is thinking for you. Choose for yourself and become free from society's undertow. The Universe is ready to support you.

  Michael Beckwith

  Inspirational, Thinking, Support You

  FaceBook post by Michael Bernard Beckwith from Sep 23, 2016

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• It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in.

  Emma Forrest

  Real, Believe, Force Fields

  Emma Forrest (2012). “Your Voice in My Head”, p.51, A&C Black

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• Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling, we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Endurance, Tumbling, Surf

  Neal A. Maxwell (1991). “Men and Women of Christ”, Bookcraft Pubs

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