Drift Quotes

I drift through forests in my dreams, I swim the lake I imagine for myself when I'm sad. It's so blue and clear. I scoop some water into my hands as I tread water and I can see right through it, almost as if it's air. Tiny, luminescent fish live at the bottom of the pool and wink at me as I swim naked and free above them, my hair spilling out around me. ~ Sarah Michelle Lynch

Friends die, friends become demented, friends quarrel, friends drift with old age into silence. ~ Donald Hall

Change is usually preceded by some kind of drift. ~ Uma Thurman

Somebody can say they don't understand why somebody drifts. But I've always found people who drift interesting, 'cause it shows me the game's not stagnant in their own head. They're thinking. ~ Dennis Miller

And there's been drift in Afghanistan over the last couple of years. And that's something that we intend to fix - this year. ~ Barack Obama

One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds.
Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day.
Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all. ~ Diane Ackerman

In a decadent society people can slowly drift or slowly be drawn by the culture of commerce into yearning for violence. Maybe people have a deep congenital awareness that no civilization lasts forever, that the most peaceful prosperity will someday have to end, or maybe it's just human nature ~ Jonathan Franzen

The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive. ~ C. Wright Mills

The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older - intelligence and good manners. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton ... I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by ... If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations ... What do you think you see, Linus?"
"Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean ... That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor ... And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen ... I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side ... "
"Uh huh ... That's very good ... What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?"
"Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind! ~ Charles M. Schulz

We do not drift into spiritual life or disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. ~ D. A. Carson

You've picked up a rummy habit," James Banister said cordially as they approached one another. "Sort of a crouch. You look a bit ... well, I'm sorry, but you look a bit Victor Hugo, if you catch my drift. Would you like to adjourn to a cathedral or something? ~ Nick Harkaway

Michael writes of sun, but all I can think of is sunsickness, too much in the sun never a daughter. As if God's light still shone on we who have shaded our eyes. A few phrases remain but the drift is vanish. No way out and no way in--a straight call to blast, Adrift on stage for all to view--the cringe, the sigh, the curveilinear clide. The scholar-trancemaker hangs from the end of a trope and asks to be cut down. An umbilical cord signifies no less. Yet despite, i can now see or is it all a mitake? & does it splatter? ~ Charles Bernstein

Even the continents drift. ~ George Will

Here's one problem with drifting: you can't drift your way to the top of the mountain. ~ Jim Rohn

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. ~ Paul Goodman

Normally, her mind was like a busy beach - all day long she would run back and forth, leaving footprints, building small mounds and castles, writing out ideas and diagrams with her fingers in the sand, but when the night tide came in, she would close her eyes and allow each wave of rhythmic breath to wash in and out over her day's accumulation, and before long the beach would be clear and empty, and she would drift off to sleep. ~ Gavriel Savit

The combined effects of mutation, natural selection and the random process of genetic drift cause changes in the composition of a population. Over a sufficiently long period of time, these cumulative effects alter the population's genetic make-up, and can thus greatly change the species' characteristics from those of its ancestors. ~ Brian Charlesworth

Some lives drift here and there like reeds in a stream, depending on changing currents for their activity. Others are like swimmers knowing the depth of the water. Each stroke helps them onward to a definite objective. ~ Margaret Sanger

All the creatures on this earth might be made from stardust.
But we are the only ones who get to know that. That's the thing about jellyfish: They'll never understand that. All they can do is drift along, unaware. ~ Ali Benjamin

I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so- I don't know- lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space. With no idea where I'm headed. ~ Haruki Murakami

He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it."
Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last. ~ Cassandra Clare

I think every once in a while country has lost its way, but found its way back. It's always going to drift away from the traditional side, but then find a way to return. There's room for all kinds of influences be it pop, blues, gospel or whatever. But I will always say that I think we need more traditional country music coming down the pike. ~ Randy Travis

The farther you progress toward a vision of our species without limiting conditions on your consciousness, the farther you drift away from what makes you a person among persons in the human community. ~ Thomas Ligotti

We Let the Boat Drift

I set out for the pond, crossing the ravine
where seedling pines start up like sparks
between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.

The grass in the field would make a second crop
if early autumn rains hadn't washed
the goodness out. After the night's hard frost
it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.

The water is utterly still. Here and there
a black twig sticks up. It's five years today,
and even now I can't accept what cancer did
to him -- not death so much as the annihilation
of the whole man, sense by sense, thought
by thought, hope by hope.

Once we talked about the life to come.
I took the Bible from the nightstand
and offered John 14: "I go to prepare
a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said.
"But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore,
must be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.'" And he wept.

My neighbor honks and waves driving by.
She counsels troubled students; keeps bees;
her goats follow her to the mailbox.

Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond. Something terrible at school had shaken her. We talked quietly far from shore. The paddles
rested across our laps; glittering drops
fell randomly from their tips. The light
around us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-
let us get quite close before it dove, coming up
after a long time, and ~ Jane Kenyon

And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I that that's not right, either' in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in a lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary. [pp. 320-321] ~ Chang-rae Lee

I had a fantasy that i'd drift up to Scotland and spend my life as a faux bodhisattua. ~ David Bowie

We are life. We are the result of life's power, and we are the channels through which that power courses. We want truth, but we reach for more knowledge instead - and then we must defend what we believe. Knowledge makes a small impression on the world compared to the power of truth - even when it serves life, elevating awareness and creating dreams of impeccability. How can knowledge serve better? How can we stop it from doing harm and creating conflict? First, we can see knowledge for what it is - all the agreements we make about reality - and get some perspective. Then we can listen to ourselves. We can modify both our thinking and our emotional attachment to thought. We can win the war in our heads, one that has gone on long enough. We can nurture a belief in ourselves and drift away from the crowd. ~ Miguel Ruiz

May your dreams be fleeting, Gravier says to us and I smile. I don't want my dreams to be fleeting tonight. Tonight I hope I would see something, anything to put my mind at ease. I fear I would get the opposite but I still drift off in the hope if they were of the nightmarish kind, that then they would be fleeting after-all. ~ Celia Mcmahon

The clouds don't overthink; they just drift. ~ Avijeet Das

Not everything needed to rise to converge: It could just drift together into the indiscernible middle, and bewilder you. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Piece by piece,
I slowly fade away,
I slowly drift apart. ~ Five Finger Death Punch

Those who believe in destiny and those who drift without such beliefs are alike the worst among men; only those who act and perform what is right for their station in life are worthy of praise. Man ~ R.K. Narayan

GORDON WAY DRIFTED miserably along the dark road, or rather, tried to drift. He felt that as a ghost - which is what he had to admit to himself he had become - he should be able to drift. He knew little enough about ghosts, but he felt that if you were going to be one then there ought to be certain compensations for not having a physical body to lug around, and that among them ought to be the ability simply to drift. But no, it seemed he was going to have to walk every step of the way. ~ Douglas Adams

Evangelical Christians need to notice ... , that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven,
And imprint forever upon our hearts
That this is home
and that we are loved. ~ Arlene Stafford-Wilson

I finished 'Ice Age: Continental Drift' in 2012, and I'm living in my agent's guest bedroom in Los Angeles because you don't make a ton of money writing an animated film. The movie makes a billion dollars, and you make 'twelve cents.' ~ Jason Fuchs

When you walk along a wooded path
In the nature my heart held so dear,
Remember the joy that it gave me
And know that I'll always be near.

When a robin announces his presence
Singing solo as day becomes new
The doe lifts her head to listen
As her fawn drinks the freshness of dew.

When an otter glides through the river,
His swim is a masterful one.
He engages his mate in a playful chase
Then they climb on the rocks to sun.

When the rustling leaves touch the autumn sky,
Boasting colors of russet and gold
Geese wing on their southern-most journey
To escape from the beckoning cold.

When the North wind blows through the towering pines
It delivers a mid winter's chill
While snowflakes drift softly on fresh frozen lakes
And the call of the wild becomes still.

In each of these things, remember me.
And know that I'll always be near.
The woodlands, God's wondrous Creation,
In His nature my heart held so dear. ~ Kris Nelson

A week goes by and I don't call Lucy or Dylan. I want to drift away from them - more than anything, I want to drift away. I sometimes imagine myself totally alone and I enjoy the feeling. And I mean something by alone, something more than the word holds. I mean something blank and pure and vacant, plus me. And also moral. This blank and pure vacancy that includes me that is also moral is so empty, it is so no one, that my presence in it makes me not exist, although I am still there, and that's what lifts all the weight. ~ Patrick Somerville

The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you're adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can't see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it's working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces. ~ Carl Safina

The biggest part of painting perhaps is faith, and waiting receptively, content to go any way, not planning or forcing. The fear, though, is laziness. It is so easy to drift and finally be tossed up on the beach, derelict. ~ Emily Carr

Weak Forces

I enjoy an accumulating
faith in weak forces--
a weak faith, of course,
easily shaken, but also
easily regained--in what
starts to drift: all the
slow untrainings of the mind,
the sift left of resolve
sustained too long, the
strange internal shift
by which there's no knowing
if this is the raod taken
or untaken. There are soft
affinities, possibly electrical;
lint-like congeries; moonlit
hints; asymmetrical pink
glowy spots that are no
the defeat of something,
I don't think. ~ Kay Ryan

He rose to his feet in one fluid move, the better to look down at me. You don't know me, princess.
Some people have reasons for doing things, and don't just go wherever they're told or drift whichever
way they're pushed. ~ Rosemary Clement-Moore

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. ~ Walter Mosley

I spoke of the tragic illusion of perpetuity, but, no, my friends, it is a comic one. The ludicrous plot in which we are all trapped. The ancient Greeks referred to plot as mythos, attributing the random drift of human affairs to some sort of unknowable but glimpsable divine motion, attempting to attach a certain grandeur to it, the delusion of meaning. But we are characters who do not exist, in a story composed by no one from nothing. Can anything be more pitiable? No wonder we all are grieving. ~ Robert Coover

Be strong! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard work to do and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle-face it; 'tis God's gift. ~ Maltbie Davenport Babcock

After the last shovel of dirt was patted in place, I sat down and let my mind drift back through the years. I thought of the old K. C. Baking Powder can, and the first time I saw my pups in the box at the depot. I thought of the fifty dollars, the nickels and dimes, and the fishermen and blackberry patches.
I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over. ~ Wilson Rawls

He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom. ~ Anton Chekhov

And, as the tiny lights drift into the blackness, the people pray that others around the world will remember Hiroshima and work for world peace.

The atom bomb is too terrible a weapon.

It must not drop again. ~ Laurence Yep

The thing to do in life is sail,
Sometimes you sail with the wind
And sometimes you sail against it
But you must sail
Not drift nor lie at anchor. ~ Anonymous Bar Patron

My mom shows me her old yearbooks, and there are tons of people in there she doesn't talk to anymore. Old boyfriends, best friends ... What do you think happened to them?"
"Maybe they drifted apart."
"That's stupid. You don't drift, not if someone matters to you."
"So maybe they didn't matter, not really."
"Anna?"
"Yeah?"
"I'd never do that. Leave you."
"I know. Me either. ~ Abigail Haas

It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of a chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven: the trunk, split down the centere, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken for each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; through communtiy of vitality was destroyed -- the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree -- a ruin, but and entire ruin.

'You did right to hold fast to each other,' I said: as if the monster splinters were living things, and could hear me. 'I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more -- never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.' As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disc was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. T ~ Charlotte Bronte

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift. ~ Lucretius

To live fully your well-read life -at any age- it is essential to take your selection of books seriously. When you drift from book to book, you're lulled into thinking that this lack of focus is right and natural - but it's as wrong as can be. Some serendipity in your reading is delightful, but if you wanted to build a house, would you wait for the materials to assemble themselves? - Steve Leveen ~ Pat Williams

There ain't nothin' to dyin', really. You just get tired. You kind of drift away. ~ James Dickey

Not everybody can let himself drift along the flow of history. Some of us have to stop to pick up what's washed up on the banks of the river. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Prayer is asking God to incarnate, to get dirty in your life. Yes, the eternal God scrubs floors. For sure we know he washes feet. So take Jesus at his word. Ask him. Tell him what you want. Get dirty. Write out your prayer requests; don't mindlessly drift through life on the American narcotic of busyness. If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don't let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day. ~ Paul E. Miller

The buildings, covered by red tiled roofs, undulate over the hillsides like a drift of wildflowers. ~ Jane Thompson

You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"
He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but ... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."
Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"
He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.
And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.
You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."
She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep ~ Holly Black

Summer of the Grandmothers"

They come back in their white
shifts, their ruffled shawls of salt
white, the way the dead always return
when you need them the most--

when it's too hot to do anything
but picture the worst - the Bomb
finally fallen, the world burned-up,
the entire planet radioactive--

when you are too weak to do anything
but lie in a stupor and call them back
to drift at your side, in eyelit dresses
of old starlight, fresh-faced and cold. ~ Susan Kelly-De Witt

As he began to drift again Jean was never sure whether he saw or did not see, a troupe of monkeys clad in blue Hussar coats piped with yellow twist, enter from a small door to swing across the great chamber and exit like nomadic wanderers into a great door emblazoned by the setting sun. ~ Craig Herbertson

Old Hollywood is just like a desert water in Africa. Hang around long enough and every kind of animal in the world will drift in for refreshments. ~ Will Rogers

But this is such a "Wheel" moment. That song rocks. The best part is where John Mayer says how our connections are permanent, how if you drift apart from someone there's always a chance you can be part of their life again. How everything comes back around again. ~ Susane Colasanti

Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love ... ~ Hermann Hesse

You're the only one who's ever been in here. You're the only one who's ever had the most important part of me. You're the one who turned a man who vowed to never love into one who loves completely." "How do you do that?" she whispered, not pulling her face away from mine. "Do what?" I stroked the backs of my fingers across her cheek. "Pull me back in the second I start to drift away?" I smiled. "I told you I was dropping anchor." "Don't ever let me go, Braeden." "Oh, baby." I vowed, "Never. ~ Cambria Hebert

During those times, only under piles of blankets did she feel substantial enough not to drift away; they kept her weighted down and a part of the world. But eventually her dog's persistence and her own strong will would win over, and she'd drag herself up from the thick bog and go back to her chores and her books, carving the missing days into the wall so they did not escape entirely. ~ Sere Prince Halverson

Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag. ~ Tennessee Williams

Tragedy speaks not of secular dilemmas which may be resolved by rational innovation, but of the unalterable bias toward inhumanity and destruction in the drift of the world. ~ George Steiner

The Grateful Dead did not play in sets; no eight numbers to a set, then a twenty-five-minute break, and so on, four or five sets and then the close-out. The Dead might play one number for five minutes or thirty minutes. Who kept time? Who could keep time, with history cut up in slices. The Dead could get just as stoned as anyone else. The ... non-attuned would look about and here would be all manner of heads, including those running the show, the Pranksters, stroked out against the walls like slices of Jello. Waiting; with nobody looking very likely to start it back up. Those who didn't care to wait would tend to drift off, stoned or otherwise, and the Test would settle down to the pudding. ~ Tom Wolfe

Leo,you are a riot of color in my grey world". Shade Lewis to Leo Cutler (Drift) ~ Michael Dean

You ask me why I dwell
amidst these jade-green hills?
I smile. No words can tell
the stillness in my heart.
Peach blossoms drift streamwater
away deep in mystery.
I live in the other world
one that lies beyond the human. ~ Li Bai

I feel that 'Tokoyo Drift' blew people away because not many people had high expectations for it. ~ Nathalie Kelley

We think the world is steady, rolling through space beneath our feet, day and night, rain and sunlight. And then, one day, you just fall off the planet and drift away, into outer space, and everything you thought was true all the laws that bound your life before, all the rules and norms that kept things in place, that kept you in place, they're gone. And nothing makes sense anymore. Gravity is gone. Love is gone. ~ Nickolas Butler

Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying? ~ Pablo Neruda

I was born to catch dragons in their dens / And pick flowers / To tell tales and laugh away the morning / To drift and dream like a lazy stream / And walk barefoot across sunshine days. ~ James Kavanaugh

One by one, the snowflakes floated down on to his warm snout, and melted. He reached out to grab them so he could admire them for a fleeting moment. He looked towards the sky and watched them drift down towards him, more and more, soft and light as a feather. 'So that's how it works,' thought Moomintroll. 'And I thought somehow that the snow grew from the ground up! ~ Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals. ~ John F. Kennedy

It's snowing." Rhys looked up at the light flakes that had started to drift down.
"Yes, it is." I grimaced as I got smacked in the eyeball with a large wet flake when I looked up. ~ Michelle Rowen

When the sun slips o'er the treetops,
then small birds fly off to nest.
Feel the peace lie on the meadows,
'tis a time that I love best.
Slumber on, little one,
I am ever near.
Drowsily, lean on me,
dream small dreams, my dear.
All the jewelled stars a-twinkle,
Watch the clouds drift through the night.
Sail upon thy boats of dreaming,
to the rays of dawning's light.
Slumber on, day is gone,
by thy side I'll lay.
Fear no harm, rest in calm,
'til the golden day. ~ Brian Jacques

Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense. ~ Ben Nicholson

In a decadent society the will to believe, to resist, to contend, to fight, to struggle is gone. In place of this will to resist, there is the desire to conform, to drift, to follow, to yield, and not give up. ~ Billy Graham

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society. ~ H.L. Mencken

All you have to do is wait," I explained. "Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone's always too busy. They're too talented, their schedules are too full. They're too interested in themselves to think about what's fair. ~ Haruki Murakami

One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument that life did not just happen. ~ Charles Frazier

The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events. ~ Bridget Riley

Don't wait until you die to learn the warrior's way. Do it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you lived. ~ Dan Millman

He did not mention that his skill was as a carver. He had never sold pounamu. He would not sell pounamu. For one could not put a price upon a treasure, just as one could not purchase mana, and one could not make a bargain with a god. Gold was not a treasure - this Tauwhare knew. Gold was like all capital in that it had no memory: its drift was always onward, away from the past. ~ Eleanor Catton

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities ; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts. ~ W.B. Yeats

Most conversations drift. You need to steer. Assume the task of cutting boring threads of conversation and of offering new options. Encourage people to tell stories they mention in passing. Don't wait to be invited into a group, introduce yourself. In short: lead. ~ Charlie Houpert

Without someone speaking into your life and keeping you on track with the things you believe, you have a tendency to drift into habitual sin- and you recognize this about yourself. ~ Craig Groeschel

Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. ~ Leo Tolstoy

In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance. ~ Edwin Land

Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I'll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I'll be re-formed as apple blossom. I'll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family's shoes. They'll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then? ~ Jenny Downham

If you wait, people will forget your camera, and the soul will drift up into view. ~ Steve McCurry

The falling leaves drift by the window The autumn leaves of red and gold ... I see your lips, the summer kisses The sunburned hands, I used to hold Since you went away, the days grow long And soon I'll hear ol' winter's song. But I miss you most of all my darling, When autumn leaves start to fall. ~ Johnny Mercer

A teach­er in Ok­la­homa re­flect­ed on the post-​grad­ua­tion af­ter­math of stu­dent so­cial di­vi­sions. "The in crowd al­ways hangs to­geth­er, even af­ter grad­ua­tion. They are the ones who will be­come debutantes af­ter their fresh­man year in col­lege. The oth­ers tend to drift away. They don't get in­vit­ed to the par­ties, they are laughed at be­cause they aren't wear­ing de­sign­er clothes, etc.," she said. But when it comes down to the pop­ular stu­dents ver­sus the out­casts, the lat­ter "are more sure of them­selves (even with the ridicule), and usu­al­ly turn out to be more suc­cess­ful and well-​adjust­ed. I would take the out­casts in a heart­beat." So would I. ~ Alexandra Robbins

The only result of our present system - unless we reverse the drift - must be the gradual extension of the fascist sector and the gradual disappearance of the system of free enterprise under a free representative government. ~ John T. Flynn

when I finally begin to drift
into sleep
your memory is the...first
and the moonlight
the last, to kiss my face. ~ Sanober Khan

Clear waters drift through the immensity of a tall forest.
In front of me a huge river mouth
receives the long wind.
Deep ripples hold white sand
and white fish swimming as in a void.
I sprawl on a big rock,
billows nourishing my humble body.
I gargle with water and wash my feet.
A fisherman pauses out on the surf.
So many fish long for bait. I look
only to the east with its lotus leaves. ~ Wang Wei

Of course you got rights, the law's on your side, but sometimes the law takes a long time to kick in and so it gets put in the hands of us poor suckers on duty. You get my drift? ~ Haruki Murakami