Langensteins River Quotes

Nothing is clear now. Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fix on a detail and see it as thought it were magnified
a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on a man's hands
or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world. The darkening sky is hugely blue, gashed with rose, blood, flame from the volcano or wound or flower of the lowering sun. The wavering green, the sea of grass, piercingly bright. Black tree trunks, contorted, arching over the river. ~ Margaret Laurence

The stream of civilisation flows on like a river: it is rapid in mid- current, slow at the sides, and has its backwaters. At best, civilisation advances by spirals. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

Directly beneath the Lotus Pond of Paradise lay the lower depths of Hell, and as He peered through the crystalline waters, He could see the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles as clearly as if He were viewing pictures in a peep-box. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

They've made it so poor," she said. "It wasn't always like this. The waters once flowed wild, and they weren't hemmed in by cement, and they roared with the fierceness of America. Before they came. But when they came, they came with armor and rage. They came with their Jesus and their crosses and we have never been wild again - neither us nor the river. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

River gonna take me, Sing me sweet and sleepy,
Sing me sweet and sleepy all the way back home,
It's a far gone lullaby sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I first left home ~ Robert Hunter

These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information. ~ Charles Sturt

Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?"
"What? No."
"It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible."
"Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say.
"Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-"
"Oh,no. Public school."
He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back."
"But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush.
St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps."
I laugh.
"So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America. ~ Stephanie Perkins

The pre-dawn air was quiet and cool; the sky showed the colors of citron, pearl, and apricot, which were reflected from the sea. Out from the Tumbling River estuary drifted the black ship Smaadra, propelled across the water by its sweeps. A mile offshore, the sweeps were shipped. The yards were raised, sails sheeted taut and back-stays set up. With the sunrise came breeze; the ship glided quickly and quietly into the east, and presently Troicinet had become a shadow along the horizon. ~ Jack Vance

Over the river and through the wood
To grandfather's house we go ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child

It was a warm and sunny afternoon.
Fresh breeze was combing the soughing reeds over the river.

Some of our tourists began unpacking foods and preparing snacks; others went up the hills raiding the local thickets of thorny, wild blackberry shrubs, picking the sourly-sweet berries and greedily eating them, like they haven't eaten anything for at least a week. ~ Sahara Sanders

Acheron is the Greek Underworld river, timelessly flowing beneath Middle World consciousness, circulating through our bloodstreams in varying states from polluted to pristine. Freud was fond of this line from Virgil's Aeneid: "If I cannot bend the gods, then I shall stir up Acheron. ~ Mary Trainor-Brigham

Ted lunged at me, put his hands on my shoulders, and pushed me into the river. The plunge into the icy water took my breath away. I came up sputtering and grabbed the rope on the edge of the raft, too dazed for the moment to do more than hang on. I looked up at Ted and our eyes locked. His face had gone blank, as though he was not there at all. I had a sense he wasn't seeing me. I struggled to pull myself into the raft. He didn't move, he didn't speak. I could find no expression on his face. ~ Elizabeth Kendall

Let us not forget the East Bank of the (River) Jordan, where seventy per cent of the inhabitants belong to the Palestinian nation. ~ George Habash

On a horse there is a perfect position of balance where he doesn't feel like he's pushing you along with him or dragging you along with him. It's like two converging currents in a river, where those currents converge, there is a point where there is no movement, no energy; and that's what you're thinking when you're on the back of a horse ... ~ Buck Brannaman

BACK IN SCHOOL, I loved ending stories that way. It's the perfect conclusion, isn't it? Billy went to school. He had a good day. Then he died. The end. It doesn't leave you hanging. It wraps everything up nice and neat. Except in my case, it didn't. Maybe you're thinking, Oh, Magnus, you didn't really die. Otherwise you couldn't be narrating this story. You just came close. Then you were miraculously rescued, blah, blah, blah. Nope. I actually died. One hundred percent: guts impaled, vital organs burned, head smacked into a frozen river from forty feet up, every bone in my body broken, lungs filled with ice water. The medical term for that is dead. Gee, Magnus, what did it feel like? It hurt. A lot. Thanks for asking. I ~ Rick Riordan

He was sad because he had grown up, and because the years passed like a river that no man could stop. ~ James T. Farrell

Yep, got it. You do know I'm a decorated ex-marine, firefighter and badass biker. I got this, sweetheart. ~ River Savage

The street is still shut as we step into the molten-gold atmosphere of mid-afternoon. The houses face each other across the passages like armies of an ancient Arabian battlefield ... .We narrow our eyes against the glare. Beating their wings, the birds too are leaving the trees for the mosque. The leaves hang like limp hands from the branches. We try to think of the cool blue river and, turning around, glance towards where the river wets the horizon. But the river, too, seems helpless before the insanity of the sun, lying like an exhausted lizard at the end of the street ~ Nadeem Aslam

He took her hand again, enjoying the spark of fire that lit through his bloodstream and led her through the fog toward River Street.

Seeing the usually bustling area empty was equally beautiful and haunting. It brought back memories of earlier days. Centuries before cell phones and email.

Back when his crew would drop anchor in the cloak of night and shanghai new crew members out of the pubs.

Lifetimes ago. ~ Lisa Kessler

In that instant she knew what it must feel like to cross a river into a foreign country, and then set fire to the bridge behind you, and stand on the riverbank, watching and breathing deeply as your only chance of retreat went up in smoke. ~ Stephen King

I'm feeling pretty motivated," Dylan said. "Cuz the sooner you leave, the sooner Alec and I can get back to that sex swing."
Tyler paused in the midst of picking up the remaining boxes. "Alex doesn't have a sew swing."
The grin that hijacked Dylan's face was huge. "He does now. ~ River Jaymes

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks"

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death. ~ Pablo Neruda

I've traveled across the world, trying to outrun my memories of you. But damned if I didn't get to every fucking continent and still see your face on the other side of my camera lens - in a crowded Tibetan market, on the cliffside of a snowy Himalayan peak, in the reflection of a muddy river in Thailand. You were always there, haunting me, around every corner. ~ Julie Johnson

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. ~ Ben Edlund

The world was a bubble now, thin and glistening, and everyone else had found their way inside. But Leonard was too heavy for the bubble. He was a man out of time: too old to be one of the spirited young people and too young to fit in with the hopeless drunkards who lined the river. He felt a connection to nothing and to nobody. ~ Kate Morton

For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes. ~ Pema Chodron

If there is no room in the river,
swim to the ocean. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.

It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;

It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a hands ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies. ~ C.S. Lewis

Hello, Sam," she breathed onto the river breeze. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. ~ Henry Walter Bates

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that's where the river will know
it's not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean. ~ Osho