rivers Quotes

“When stuck in the river, it is best to dive and swim to the bank yourself before someone drops a large stone on your chest in an attempt to hoosh you there.”

“There’s no earthly way of knowing Which direction they are going! There’s no knowing where they’re rowing, Or which way the river’s flowing! Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, For the rowers keep on rowing, And they’re certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. . . .”

“And the ship sailed onward, gliding serenely down the moonlit river toward the dark lands beyond.”

“As long as some suffer The River Flows Forever As long as there is pain The River Flows Forever As strong as a smile can be The River will Flow Forever”

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us.

Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded. “Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.

“Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.”

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

“A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her.”

“On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.”

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

“The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.”

“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So - this - is - a - River!” “The River,” corrected the Rat.

“It was puzzling that such a muddy little river like the Rio Grande should make such a difference in terms of what was lawful and what not.”

“Some people are going to love you like you are a pond, and others are going to love you like you are a river, but you are an ocean, and you should never settle for anyone who loves you for anything less than that.”

“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things?”

“The Nile: the longest river in the world, the mother of all life in Sudan.”

“They stared at each other in the flickering light, realized what this meant. There was no tunnel leading out of Ember. The way out was the river. To leave Ember, they must go on the river.”

“I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river.”

“You are like a river. You go through life taking the path of least resistance. We all do—all human beings and all of nature. It is important to know that.”

“Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eye-water, from eye-water to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these fascinations.”

“What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?”

“Back through the river! Splash splosh! Splash splosh! Splash splosh!”

“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it”

″ ‘I love you all the way down the lane as far as the river,’ cried Little Nutbrown Hare. ‘I love you across the river and over the hills,’ said Big Nutbrown Hare. ”

“Splash, the ferryman lived in a tiny house beside the river. He had a cheerful-looking little boat painted blue and the oars were orange. The boat was called Here-we-go! and everyone like going across the river in it. Splash was really a very busy little man.”

“Down by the river in the heat of the day the crocodile sleeps and awaits his prey.”

“Bravest heart will carry on when sleep is death, and hope is gone. Rowan doesn’t believe he has a brave heart. But when the river that supports his village of Rin runs dry, he must join a dangerous journey to its source in the forbidden Mountain.”

“Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.”

“Life is a river,” a wise friend told me. “It’s flowing. You’re never at the same place twice.”

The family drives for hours and moves into a small cottage by a river that starts up beyond them and eventually flows down into the ocean. Jess, an excellent swimmer who craves time in the water, loves the location and the river.

“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”

“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.”

“Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.”

‘That’s right,’ said Dad. ‘And then, tired after its long journey, it will see down below the long blue ribbon of the river, it will see the small gold and emerald jewel of the island; it will see the little brown house built of baked mud.”

“Water isn’t shaped like a river or ocean; it mists invisibly against metal and glass”

“Father Pig went out into the night and carried the blanket bundle to the middle of the bridge. There he leant over the parapet and shook Mrs Wolf into the swirling depths of the big river. And she was not heard of again for a very long time.”

“Little Toot was so excited he puffed more and more smoke balls. They gave him a wonderful idea. Those smoke balls could probably be seen all the way up the river, where his father and grandfather were. So he puffed a signal…S.O.S.”

“So there was always exciting work for tugboats to do. They pushed the big ships into the docks to be unloaded. They towed the ships down the river to the wide, deep ocean.”

“Or he made fancy figure 8′s. He liked to make bigger and bigger ones. One day, carried away by the joy of it, he made one so big it took up the whole river.”

“Little Toot was right in the middle of all the excitement. He watched his father work hard. Big Toot was the biggest and fastest tugboat on the river.”

“Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind.”

“The sight of the brave, bustling tugboats made Little Toot think. Suddenly a great new idea came to him. ‘I don’t want to be a silly tugboat anymore,’ he thought. ‘I want to be a real tugboat, the best tugboat on the river. Then I’ll make my father proud of me.’ ”

“Against the black sky climbed a brilliant, flaming rocket. It was a ship’s danger flare. Little Toot looked hard and saw a ship jammed between two huge rocks. It was an ocean liner his father had towed many times down the river.”

″ ‘Merriest, merriest, merriest,’ murmured Diamond as he sank deeper and deeper in sleep. ‘That is what the song of the river is telling me. Even I can be merry and cheerful - and that will help some. And so I will - when - I - wake - up - again.’ And he went off sound asleep.”

“Of all the places the Eberhardts had lived, Roy’s favorite was Bozeman, Montana. The snaggle-peaked mountains, the braided green rivers, the sky so blue it seemed like a painting - Roy had never imagined anywhere so beautiful.”

“All night long Ping slept near the grasses on the bank of the river with his head tucked under his wing, and when the sun rose up from the east Ping found he was all alone on the Yangtze river.”

“Ping hid behind the grasses, and as the dark came and the pale moon shone in the sky Ping watched the wise eyed boat slowly sail away down the Yangtze river.”

“Mrs. Moss had always distrusted the river, not for herself, but because she was afraid of her children falling in. The only one who had done so, years ago, was David’s elder brother Dick; the falling in had had no special effect upon him, unless perhaps it had given him a taste for water- he was in the Navy now.”

“They pulled and they pulled and up came Ping and the Boy on to the house boat.”

“Now, you gentlemen can save a lot of time if you just line up across the river and I’ll be along to give you each a lollipop.”

″‘It’s funny about paths and rivers,’ he mused. ‘You see them go by, and suddenly you feel upset and want to be somewhere else- wherever the path or the river is going, perhaps.‘”

“Now the boats on the river talked to the little red lighthouse as they passed. ‘Hoot, hoot, hoot! How are you?’ said the big steamer, with it’s deep, throaty whistle.”

“I flash to the ships of the air. But you are still master of the river. Quick, let your light shine again. Each to his own place, little brother!”

“Sister Fish looks up from the depths of her river and longs to swim in the sky. Brother Bird peers down at the ``other sky,″ a stretch of blue river he wants to explore.”

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.

“I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace.”