Harbour Quotes

You know your relationship has run its course when, despite any feelings you may still harbour, it just is not worth the heartache anymore. ~ Shane K.P. O'Neill

The Ball Poem"

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball.
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over - there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street,
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight.
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy. ~ John Berryman

One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into - and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. We have not been asked about our feelings anyway. Thrown into a vast open sea with no navigation charts and all the marker buoys sunk and barely visible, we have only two choices left: we may rejoice in the breath-taking vistas of new discoveries - or we may tremble out of fear of drowning. One option not really realistic is to claim sanctuary in a safe harbour; one could bet that what seems to be a tranquil haven today will be soon modernized, and a theme park, amusement promenade or crowded marina will replace the sedate boat sheds. The third option not thus being available, which of the two other options will be chosen or become the lot of the sailor depends in no small measure on the ship's quality and the navigation skills of the sailors. Not all ships are seaworthy, however. And so the larger the expanse of free sailing, the more the sailor's fate tends to be polarized and the deeper the chasm between the poles. A pleasurable adventure for the well-equipped yacht may prove a dangerous trap for a tattered dinghy. In the last account, the difference between the two is that between life and death. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

You are no greater than the knowledge you acquire, the desires you harbour, and the experiences you cherish. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Lines written for a thirtieth wedding anniversary


Somewhere up in the eaves it began:
high in the roof – in a sort of vault
between the slates and the gutter – a small leak.
Through it, rain which came from the east,
in from the lights and foghorns of the coast –
water with a ghost of ocean salt in it –
spilled down on the path below.
Over and over and over
years stone began to alter,
its grain searched out, worn in:
granite rounding down, giving way
taking into its own inertia that
information water brought, of ships,
wings, fog and phosphor in the harbour.
It happened under our lives: the rain,
the stone. We hardly noticed. Now
this is the day to think of it, to wonder:
all those years, all those years together –
the stars in a frozen arc overhead,
the quick noise of a thaw in the air,
the blue stare of the hills – through it all
this constancy: what wears, what endures. ~ Eavan Boland

I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad bridges and the ruins of factories and warehouses. ~ Steven Pinker

A female ship should slowly go to dock when she sees a male harbour, for this is the most natural thing to do! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

As Walt Whitman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbour multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle. There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behaviour. ~ Damian Thompson

One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant and sad - into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum - I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus.
Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and sorrow, and anger. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

All of us want to live, and that is absolutely natural. However, we should learn from childhood on to choose our best way to die. If we don't do that, we end up spending our days like a dog, only in search of harbour, food and expressing a blind loyalty to his owner in return. That isn't enough to make our lives have a meaning. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible. ~ Ridley Scott

The soldier doesn't usually act on his own initiative, he doesn't harbour feelings of hatred or resentment or jealousy, he isn't motivated by long-held desires or personal ambition; the only motivating force is a vague, rhetorical, empty patriotism, for those soldiers, that is, who are moved by such feelings or allow themselves to be convinced. ~ Javier Marias

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. ~ Magnus Linton

You see, Harry, after you've been through a few adventures you tend to catch the hang of these things. You start to see the pattern, hear the rhythm of the world. You begin to harbour suspicions before the moment of revelation. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Your good thoughts, good words and good deeds alone will be your intercessors. Nothing more will be wanted. They alone will serve you as a safe pilot to the harbour of Heaven, as a safe guide to the gates of paradise. ~ Zoroaster

A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two of your powerful neighbours come to blows, they are of such a character that, if one of them conquers, you have either to fear him or not. In either case it will always be more advantageous for you to declare yourself and to make war strenuously; because, in the first case, if you do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall a prey to the conqueror, to the pleasure and satisfaction of him who has been conquered, and you will have no reasons to offer, nor anything to protect or to shelter you. Because he who conquers does not want doubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who loses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand, court his fate. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold. ~ Barnabe Barnes

When you're alone, you harbour one hundred percent all of the good things. But this also means that you harbour all the bad things. I learnt my own goals slowed down when I was with others, but having shared the good things, sharing the pain, having that friendship excelled what I alone couldn't do. It doesn't need to be logical, friendships are a part of life, and when is that logical? Life doesn't make sense, but you don't have to live it alone. ~ Michael Rogers

The most amazing thing to me about the sea is the tide. A harbour like St. Ives is totally transformed in a very short space of time by the arrival or departure of the sea. ~ John Dyer

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Frodo: Sam! Wood-Elves! They're going to the harbour beyond the White Towers. To the Grey Havens
Sam: They're leaving Middle-earth.
Frodo: Never to return. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There was something sexy as hell about us well read book sluts. ~ Haylie Harbour

If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force. ~ Dick Cheney

It was one of those Hobart spring nights, cold as charity, snow coming down hard on the mountain, the harbour a lather, sleet slapping and scratching at windows and tin roofs like a wild drunk who's been locked out. ~ Richard Flanagan

Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat. ~ Will Ferguson

But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.
No, said Tolkien, they are not.
... just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.
You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand. ~ Humphrey Carpenter

Just because women can bear children doesn't mean they're unable to harbour the same sort of career ambitions as a man. ~ Cathy Kelly

In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet.
In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools. ~ Alan Paton

Robbing humans of their faces and individuality is no less a form of evil than diminishing their dignity or looking for threats primarily among those who have immigrated or harbour different religious beliefs. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions. ~ Sebastian Coe

Ocean vents harbour some of the most extraordinary life on the planet. ~ Bill Bryson

Pepper it was that brought Vasco da Gama's tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon's Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast: first to Calicut and later, for its lagoony harbour, to Cochin. English and French sailed in the wake of that first-arrived Portugee, so that in the period called Discovery-of-India - but how could we be discovered when we were not
covered before? - we were 'not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment', as my distinguished mother had it. ~ Salman Rushdie

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A ship is safe in the harbour, but thats not what ships are built for. ~ N.a.

Sometimes, too, when their spiritual masters, such as confessors and superiors, do not approve of their spirit and behavior (for they are anxious that all they do shall be esteemed and praised), they consider that they do not understand them, or that, because they do not approve of this and comply with that, their confessors are themselves not spiritual. And so they immediately desire and contrive to find some one else who will fit in with their tastes; for as a rule they desire to speak of spiritual matters with those who they think will praise and esteem what they do, and they flee, as they would from death, from those who disabuse them in order to lead them into a safe road - sometimes they even harbour ill-will against them. Presuming thus, they are wont to resolve much and accomplish very little. Sometimes they are anxious that others shall realize how spiritual and devout they are, to which end they occasionally give outward evidence thereof in movements, sighs and other ceremonies; and at times they are apt to fall into certain ecstasies, in public rather than in secret, wherein the devil aids them, and they are pleased that this should be noticed, and are often eager that it should be noticed more. ~ Juan De La Cruz

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. Far fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear.
I have never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail. The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.
They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone over the waves.
And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load. ~ Seamus Heaney

It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it's a balloon that's bouncing against the ceiling and can't get free.
She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to float. She needed an earthly anchor of meaning and care so she didn't get lost in the confusion. ~ Tove Jansson

You play because you have a guilty attraction to supernatural beasts and harlequin love stories, but you harbour the secret presumption that you could write them way better yourself. Good. This is your opportunity to prove it. ~ Avery Alder

A man must preserve himself for his work and must be thoroughly acquainted with the road to it. A man, dear, is like the pilot on a ship. In youth, as at high tide, go straight! A way is open to you everywhere. But you must know when it is time to steer. The waters recede - here you see a sandbank, there, a rock; it is necessary to know all this and to slip off in time, in order to reach the harbour safe and sound. ~ Maxim Gorky

A statue of Arturo Prat, hero of the Chilean Navy, surveyed it all. From under his statue I look up onto those fragrant wooded hills. The shanty houses blur into a pastiche of colour, yellows and reds, cobalt and purple. The washing lines strung across the stairways and hung from balconies echo the ships' flags fluttering in the harbour.

This is a city of the muses. For poets, painters and composers. This is the artists' enclave. This is Venice and Florence waiting to be explored, and I dream it still. ~ Brian Keenan

Raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond it were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs. ~ L.M. Montgomery

One gram of moss from the forest floor, a piece about the size of a muffin, would harbour 150,000 protozoa, 132,000 tardigrades, 3,000 springtails, 800 rotifers, 500 nematodes, 400 mites, and 200 fly larvae. These numbers tell us something about the astounding quantity of life in a handful of moss. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild leaves out luck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now, that only she can recognize in a mirror. Ideal and idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She is a woman I don't know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life. ~ Michael Ondaatje

He that has fallen, is now of the dead, proud of spirit, a crown on his head, I call his likeness into bronze and plastic instead." Micah ~ Katherine Harbour

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea. ~ Mark Kurlansky

You call me but I can't hear. I speak a language you don't know. The body falling by the side of the bed. Eyes closed contemplating the night. I conjugate language that doesn't exist. The imaginary and its child the failurative. I speak stiff, the language she didn't teach me before she left. I speakstiff with all my stiffened body. I want to come back to you but I can't. Because of the red liqueur which is spreading in my blood. Because of the red liqueur which paralyses my brain. I can't come back to you. I'm slipping out to sea as I look back at the harbour. You're holding my hand but you're only holding on to wood. You're speaking to me but I hear only the walls. You're smiling but I'm on the other side of the mirror. The woman in mauve is carrying me off to her castle. And the silent coachman accompanies her. ~ Jeanne Hyvrard

The Lady with the Lamp, the Statue of Liberty, stands in New York Harbour. Her back is squarely turned on the USA. It's no wonder, considering what she would have to look upon. She would weep, if she had to face this way. ~ Claudia Jones

Some people harbour so much thorns inside, it strangles out all the beauty. The kingdom under yer aunt's keep – smothered by nettles and vines – be a reflection of her heart. A rosebush with nary a rose. It weren't ye that caused it. It were her own dark devices and hatred that drived her. That ugliness be makin' bits way out as we speak. It'll be what vanquishes her in the end. ~ A.G. Howard

I have never cared for Castles
or a Crown that grips too tight,
Let the night sky be my starry roof
and the moon my only light,
My Heart was born a Hero,
my storm-bound sword won't rest,
I left the Harbour long ago
on a Never-ending Quest,
I am off to the horizon,
where the wild wind blows the foam,
Come get lost with me, love,
and the sea shall be our home! ~ Cressida Cowell

There, in front of us, where a broken row of houses stood between us and the harbour, and where the eye encountered all sorts of stratagems, such as pale-blue and pink underwear cakewalking on a clothesline ... it was most satisfying to make out among the jumbled angles of roofs and walls, a splendid ship's funnel, showing from behind the clothesline as something in a scrambled picture – Find What the Sailor Has Hidden – that the finder cannot unsee once it has been seen." A brilliant, and moving, mixture of perception and reality. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds - sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave him. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother. ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end. ~ Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind. ~ Leonard Cohen

What we have seen of recent American action in the Pacific, the bombing of Tokyo and the engagements in the Coral Sea, off Midway Island and at Dutch Harbour, has been sufficient indication that America is beginning to discharge her supremely important duty in the Pacific. ~ Chiang Kai-shek

When I'm not surfing or sailing, I am to be found at the harbour working on my boat. ~ Laura Dekker

I always look forward to going for a walk in Rushcutters Bay Park, right down to the bottom where you can look in the clear water of the harbour. I use that time to clear my head and really focus my thoughts. ~ Catherine Martin

Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may. ~ Oscar Wilde

Throughout the autumn and the winter activity increased in the Beaulieu area, and with it came mysteries. Lepe House, the mansion at the entrance to the river, was taken over by the Navy and became full of secretive Naval officers; it became known that this was part of a mysterious Navel entity called 'Force J'. Near Lepe House and at the very mouth of the river a construction gang began work in full strength to make a hard, sloping concrete platform running down into the river where the flat-bottomed landing craft could beach to refuel and let their ramps down to embark the vehicles and tanks. This place was about two miles from 'Mastodon'. A mile or so along the coast a country house was occupied by a secret Naval party who did strange things with tugs and wires and winches, and with what looked like a gigantic reel of cotton floating in the sea; this was 'Pluto', Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was to lay pipes from England to France to carry petrol to supply the armies which were due to land in Normandy. On a bare beach nearby a thousand navvies were camped making huge concrete structures known as 'Phoenix', one of many such sites all along the coast. It was not till after the invasion that it became known that these were a part of the artificial harbour 'Mulberry' on the north coast of France. ~ Nevil Shute

9/11 changed America fundamentally, far more so than outsiders realised at the time. For Americans, it genuinely was a new Pearl Harbour: an attack on the homeland that made them feel vulnerable for the first time in 60 years. ~ Jonathan Powell

There is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his stature than a woman telling him she loves him. and however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her. ~ Jo Nesbo

Some people harbour an awkward clash of feelings - homosexual attraction on the one hand and shame or embarrassment about that attraction on the other. It is well known that the mind struggles to sustain conflicting views. ~ Evan Davis

Aunt Elizabeth," said Katherine one day, "does anybody ever die in Harbour Hill? Because it doesn't seem to me it would be any change for them if they did. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another....
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants
We ~ William Shakespeare

The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth. ~ Robert Wilson Lynd

I climbed the hill of firs and looked down over the fields of mist and silver in the moonlight. The shadows of the ferns and sweet wild grasses along the edge of the woods were like a dance of sprites. Away beyond the harbour, below the moonlight, was a sky of purple and amber where a sunset had been. ~ L.M. Montgomery

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan?" "It's quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Everything was so beautiful in this magical moment before sunrise. The wild blue irises around the pond, the violet shadows in the curves of the dunes, the white, filmy mist hanging over the buttercup valley across the pond, the cloth of gold and silver thtat was called a field of daisies, thye cool, delicious gulf breeze, the blue of far lands beyond the harbour, plumes of purple and mauve smoke going up on the still, golden air from the chimneys of Stovepipe Town where the fishermen rose early. And Teddy lying at her feet, his slim brown hands clasped behind his head. Again she felt thye magnetic attraction of his personality. Felt it so strongly that she dared not meet his eyes. Yet she was admitting to herself with a secret cadour which would have horrified Aunt Elizabeth that she wanted to run her fingers through his sleek black hair- feel his arms about her- press her face against his dark tender ne- feel his lips on her lips-
Teddy took one of his hands from under his head and put it over hers. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers ~ Leonard Cohen

In History, stagnant waters, whether they be stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life and vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all. ~ Herbert Read

Acting engenders and harbours qualities that are best left way behind in adolescence. ~ Carrie Fisher

See you in Djerholm harbour," Specht called. "No mourners." "No funerals," the others replied. Strange people. ~ Leigh Bardugo

the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet un-minted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine's at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear he zelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I'm grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, another when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being - all give it up? - when he is a - yours till the rending of the rocks, - Sham. ~ James Joyce

This is the first duty of parents, and no false delicacy should keep them from the watchful care, the gentle warning, which makes self-knowledge and self-control the compass and pilot of the young as they leave the safe harbour of home. ~ Louisa May Alcott

All sorts of thoughts cross one's mind - it depends upon whether one gives them harbour and encouragement ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Do jungle animals understand the true nature of the trees among which they have their daily being? In the parent-forest, amid those mighty trunks, we shelter and play; but whether the trees are healthy or corroded, whether they harbour demons or good spirites, we cannot say. Nor do we know the greatest secret of all: that one day we, too, will become as arboreal as they. And the trees, whose leaves we eat, whose bark we gnaw, remember sadly that they were animals once, they climbed like squirrels and bounded like deer, until one day they paused, and their legs grew down into the earth and stuck there, spreading, and vegetation sprouted from their swaying heads. They remember this as a fact; but the lived reality of their fauna years, the how-it-felt of that chaotic freedom is beyond recapture. They remember it as a rustle in their leaves. ~ Salman Rushdie

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic's file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police
Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glass. The file spun a little and came to rest, like a compass needle pointing somewhere far off the edge of the map. Looking back from right here and right now I believe I would like to start this story right then - three days after I had just turned fourteen - spending my birthday in jail. - SINKING DEEPER ~ Steve Vernon

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage opposing winds. He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about. ~ Seneca.

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. ~ Annette Janic

We all harbour a great sadness in our soul ~ Paulo Coelho

Gustav Levi is calm for the first time. A ship that's been hurled by the storm into harbour. He's where he wants to be. He is finally inside me, taking full physical possession. Fucking me. He increases his pace, thrusting once, twice more, his pleasure, my pleasure, this wonderful new calmness and belonging, then as the storm crashes over us, over the chalet, battering at the mountain, we come together. ~ Primula Bond

Certain foods, such as meat, appear to harbour toxic bacteria - known as endotoxins - that can trigger inflammation in your arteries, even when food is fully cooked. ~ Michael Greger

It's a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun there was nothing left of them. And that is what the ladies are like: mostly water. ~ Margaret Atwood

Ken Wharfe

Before Diana disappeared from sight, I called her on the radio. Her voice was bright and lively, and I knew instinctively that she was happy, and safe. I walked back to the car and drove slowly along the only road that runs adjacent to the bay, with heath land and then the sea to my left and the waters of Poole Harbour running up toward Wareham, a small market town, to my right. Within a matter of minutes, I was turning into the car park of the Bankes Arms, a fine old pub that overlooks the bay. I left the car and strolled down to the beach, where I sat on an old wall in the bright sunshine. The beach huts were locked, and there was no sign of life. To my right I could see the Old Harry Rocks--three tall pinnacles of chalk standing in the sea, all that remains, at the landward end, of a ridge that once ran due east to the Isle of Wight. Like the Princess, I, too, just wanted to carry on walking.
Suddenly, my radio crackled into life: "Ken, it's me--can you hear me?" I fumbled in the large pockets of my old jacket, grabbed the radio, and said, "Yes. How is it going?"
"Ken, this is amazing, I can't believe it," she said, sounding truly happy. Genuinely pleased for her, I hesitated before replying, but before I could speak she called again, this time with that characteristic mischievous giggle in her voice. "You never told me about the nudist colony!" she yelled, and laughed raucously over the radio. I laughed, too--although what I actually though ~ Larry King

I've spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it's out beyond the harbour on the high seas, but it's very nice to look at. ~ John Boyne

And when we pushed away that other, bad vision, we felt good again and everything was a joy to us: the fire, the smell of trampled grass, that our shirts had dried, the sleep of the earth, the taste of cigarettes, the forest, our rested legs, the stardust, life - life most of all.

In the end, we went on. The dawn met us. The sun warmed us. We kept walking. Our legs buckled, our shoulders went numb, our hands swelled, but we managed to carry it to the cemetery - to the grave - our last harbour on earth, at which we put in only once, never again to sail forth - this Stefan Kanik, eighteen, killed in a tragic accident, during blasting, by a block of coal. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We each harbour a talent. It hibernates within us, snug yet eager, waiting for the first darling buds of opportunity to emerge. ~ Kevin Ansbro

A ship in harbour is safe, but it's not fulfilling its potential ~ Susan Jeffers

It is better to be wise for one day than to be intelligent for a thousand.
It is better to know yourself than to understand your enemies.
It is better to find yourself than to find a thousand pots of gold.
It is better to rule your mind than to rule the world.
It is better to fight for justice than to give into tyranny.
It is better to live in a pure mind than to reside in a darkened soul.
It is better to be remembered as a coward than as a fool.
It is better to study yourself than to examine your enemies.
It is better to teach young children than to instruct old fools.
It is better to strengthen your weaknesses than to celebrate your strengths.
It is better to fight your fears than to harbour your anxieties.
It is better to win hearts than to ruin souls.
It is better to think your highest than to act your lowest.
It is better to learn from fools than to ignore the wise.
It is better to learn from your mistakes than to celebrate your success.
It is better to think for yourself than to allow intellectuals to think for you.
It is better to be wise and poor than to be rich and ignorant.
It is better to learn from children than to teach the wise.
It is better to learn truth from your enemies than lies from your friends.
It is better to be ostracized for who you are than to be embraced for who you are not.
It is better to be hated for your virtues than to be loved for your vices.< ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

(...) a course laid between the seed and the snare
marks of venerable syringes ordered
to excite the awareness of Transcendence
first and last harbour the disinfecting of exile
on the bridge no one, only me,
searching for approaches and testing traitor neurons
grading thoughts repenting in an incomprehensible tongue
and again attempting to show the splash-down of a world
which moves up and down within the walls of experience
a tragedy which travels unruffled
hell without sinners without return (...) ~ Dimitris Lyacos

Much like the Harbour Falls Mystery itself, the man at the center was a puzzle. And I longed to solve him piece by piece. ~ S.R. Grey

Mental ghettos are not mirages; they actually exist in palpable reality: being "open" inside one's mental or intellectual ghetto does not open its door but simply allows one to harbour the illusion that there is no ghetto and no door. The most dangerous prisons are those with invisible bars. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Your words are powerful containers, carrying blessings or curses depending on what is inside of you. If you harbour bitterness in you, you will speak spitefully and create hurt and hatred in those you speak with. If there is love inside of you, you will release pleasant and caring words that create appreciation, gratitude and warmth in those around you. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Then, in the late summer of 1790, Humboldt began to study finance and economics at the academy of trade in Hamburg. He hated it for it was all numbers and account books. In his spare time, Humboldt delved into scientific treatises and travel book, he learned Danish and Swedish - anything was better than his business studies. Whenever he could, he walked down to the River Elbe in Hamburg where he watched the large merchant vessels that brought tobacco, rice and indigo from the United States. The 'sight of the ships in the harbour', he told a friend, was what held him together - a symbol of his hopes and dreams. He couldn't wait to be finally the 'master of his own luck'. ~ Andrea Wulf

I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, an arid kind of place, but every day I took the ferry across the harbour to get to school. I'd watch the ships coming in and going out. ~ Pamela Stephenson

Restless and walked down to the harbour. It was about eleven at night ~ John Fowles

Yes, I'm the one who washes the plates and glasses
They call me an easy woman
When they give me a penny
I still have to say thank you
Here I am, in ragged clothes
At the bottom of this shabby hotel
Today, you don't know who I am
Today, you don't know who I am

But one evening, one beautiful evening
A big commotion
People running along the shore
Saying: "Look who's coming!"
And me, I'll smile for the first time
They'll say: "You, you're smiling now?"

A big ship
A hundred cannons at the portholes
Will enter the harbour!

I'll always be washing
The glasses and plates
I'll always be an "easy woman"
When they give me a penny
I'll always say thank you
I'll keep my ragged clothes
At the bottom of this shabby hotel
And tomorrow, tomorrow like today
You'll never know who I am!

But one evening, that beautiful evening for which I live
Look how the cannons
Wake up and turn
For the first time, I'll burst out laughing
"What, brat, you have the heart to laugh?"

That big ship
A hundred cannons at the portholes
Will bombard the harbour!

Then the sailors will come to shore
More than a hundred, they'll mark with a cross of blood
Every house, every door
And it's before me that will be brought
Enchained, imploring, mutilated and bloodied
Your kind, all your kind, fi ~ Bertolt Brecht

Something killed them. Long ago. I don't know exactly what. Some great cataclysm of the earth, that buried whole cities in a matter of days. It sank the coast, drowning harbour towns, and changed the courses of rivers. It wiped out the dragons, and I think it killed the Elderlings as well. ~ Robin Hobb

Madness and passion have always been interchangeable. Throughout the entire western literary tradition. Madness is an abundance of existence. Madness is a way of asking difficult questions. What did he mean, the powerless tyrant king? O Fool, I shall go mad.
Maybe madness is the excess of possibility, ... And writingis about reducing possibility to ne idea, one book, one sentence, one word. Madness is a form of self-expression. It is the opposite of creativity. You cannot make anything that can be separated from yourself if you are mad. And yet, look at Rimbaud
and your wonderful Christopher Smart. But don't harbour any romantic ideas about what it means to be mad. My language was my protection, my guarantee against madness and when there was no one to listen my language vanished along with my reader. ~ Patricia Duncker