River Banks Quotes

November arrives in Northern Maine on a cold wind from Canada that knives unfiltered through the thinnest forest, drapes snow along the river banks and over the slope of hills. It's lonely up here, not just in fall and winter but all the time; the weather is gray and hard and the spaces are long and hard, and that north wind blows through every space unmercifully, rattling the syllables out of your sentences sometimes. ~ Gerard Donovan

I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over the fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? And I came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviously the more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and the sun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems so trivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to the other; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, is heard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seen in the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, how tragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of the Universe!



The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace of Nature - calm, passive, silent, unfathomable, - and our own everyday worries - paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself as I keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe the fields across the river.



Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names a ~ Rabindranath Tagore

As long as water is there,
two banks accompany each other
for a period perpetual. ~ Geeta Tripathee

The sky's inclemency stirs up the angry winds;
the watery clouds are soaking with ceaseless rain.
The turbulent Vltava, swollen with rainy waves,
Bursting, impetuous, breaks through its river banks. ~ Elizabeth Jane Weston

A night of exhilaration, of boredom and terror, in which the merest of sounds took on other forms - grew large in the expanse of darkness. After several hours the sheep gradually stopped calling to each other from accross the river banks, and a brittle quiet descended. I desperately wanted to walk down to the water's edge. To see the black river in the moonlight. But a mixture of reason and fear kept me locked along the safe paths high above. ~ Richard Skelton

And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year's withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake's two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes - who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres? ~ Halldor Laxness

An array of colorful camps dotted the river banks, like a Garrison of army on a peace keeping mission. A mini India; many great nations; different people living in the same place, an inversion of the notion of nation. ~ Aporva Kala

You want to be dominated. ~ Maya Banks

We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time."
I gasp. I also try to decide what kind of flowers I'll bring to her funeral after I strangle the life from her body. I should have stayed in Jersey, like Mom said. Shouldn't have come here with Chloe and her parents. What business do I have in Florida? We live on the Jersey Shore. If you've seen one beach, you've seen them all, right?
But noooooooo. I had to come and spend the last of my summer with Chloe, because this would be our last summer together before college, blah-blah-blah. And now she's taking revenge on me for not letting her use my ID to get a tattoo last night. But what did she expect? I'm white and she's black. I'm not even tan-white. I'm Canadian-tourist white. If the guy could mistake her for me, then he shouldn't be giving anyone a tattoo, right? I was just protecting her. Only, she doesn't realize that. I can tell by that look in her eyes-the same look she wore when she replaced my hand sanitizer with personal lubricant-that she's about to take what's left of my pride and kick it like a donkey.
"Uh, we didn't get your name. Did you get his name, Emma?" she asks, as if on cue.
"I tried, Chloe. But he wouldn't tell me, so I tackled him," I say, rolling my eyes.
The guy smirks. This almost-smile hints at how breathtaking a real one would be. The tingling flares up again, and I rub my arms. ~ Anna Banks

Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it's there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy? ~ Jose Saramago

It's funny about paths and rivers," he mused. "You see them go by, and suddenly you feel upset and want to be somewhere else--wherever the path or the river is going, perhaps. ~ Tove Jansson

[A]ll her hardships had been self-inflicted and recreational in the past. ~ Iain M. Banks

People always find it so frustrating that there's no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they're afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it's not the way things work. I never know what the hell's going to happen next, but I can live with that. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

Fire on anything that moves on the river. ~ Kingoro Hashimoto

The cities of the eastern American fall line are well known today - Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Philadelphia - even though the part that the very similar accidents of geology and river behavior played in their origins may have been long forgotten. ~ Simon Winchester

He had no breath, no being, but in hers, she was his voice; he did not speak to her. But trembled on her words; She was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw hers, Which colored all his objects-he had crease to live within himself; She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts ... ~ Suzanne Enoch

As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do
as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro
to and fro. If, at this moment in time Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too, move on, too. ~ John Irving

The idea of suicide is of a very set narrative, as if killing yourself is a definitive statement. But it can be just as meaningless as throwing a stone in a river. ~ Denise Mina

[…] I began to see Algiers as one of the most fascinating and dramatic places on earth. In the small space of this beautiful but congested city intersected two great conflicts of the contemporary world. The first was the one between Christianity and Islam (expressed here in the clash between colonizing France and colonized Algeria). The second, which acquired a sharpness of focus immediately after the independence and departure of the French, was a conflict at the very heart of Islam, between its open, dialectical - I would even say "Mediterranean" - current and its other, inward-looking one, born of a sense of uncertainty and confusion vis-à-vis the contemporary world, guided by fundamentalists who take advantage of modern technology and organizational principles yet at the same time deem the defense of faith and custom against modernity as the condition of their own existence, their sole identity.

[…] In Algiers one speaks simply of the existence of two varieties of Islam - one, which is called the Islam of the desert, and a second, which is defined as the Islam of the river (or of the sea). The first is the religion practiced by warlike nomadic tribes struggling to survive in one of the world's most hostile environments, the Sahara. The second Islam is the faith of merchants, itinerant peddlers, people of the road and of the bazaar, for whom openness, compromise, and exchange are not only beneficial to trade, but necessary to life itself. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea. ~ Oscar Wilde

The currency there is imagination; instead of buying something with coins, you buy it with a good story. Libraries aren't known as libraries but as "banks," and every fairy tale is worth a fortune. ~ Fredrik Backman

I think comedy has to be very fearless, or it just gets bland. ~ Elizabeth Banks

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve. ~ Iain Banks

China uses about half of the world's cement for its new roads and buildings.
According to the World Bank in 2007, China had 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities.
One day in January 2013, the air pollution index in Beijing was 755 - measured on a scale of 0 to 500!
In late 2012, 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the river that supplies water to
Shanghai, the PRC's largest city.
For 2010, a ministry of the Chinese government estimated the monetary cost of the environmental damage caused by rapid industrialization at $230 billion, which is 3.5 percent of China's gross domestic product.
Air pollution from Chinese factories wafts over to the Koreas and Japan. Sometimes, upper atmospheric winds carry the sulphur dioxide from China's coal-burning clear over to North America's west coast. ~ James Peoples

That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the flat swampy foreshore of Sulyma grow small in the distance. The gap in the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. Now manifestly the domain of Porroh was only a little place, a little black band between the lea and the blue cloudy Mendi uplands.
("Pollock And The Porroh Man") ~ H.G.Wells

Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away.
The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end. ~ Louis Sachar

It's the Cuyahoga River that puts the cleave in Cleveland, separating East from Midwest, integration from segregation, a place that sees itself as America's westernmost Eastern city from a place that sees itself as the easternmost midwestern city. The rest of the country sees it as neither, though it must be said that the rest of the country is perversely wont to misunderstand Cleveland. ~ Mark Winegardner

Indeed, the city has been excavated continuously by German archaeologists since 1906 (Kuhrt 2010, 1:234). Hattusa was located both within the center of Anatolia and the middle of the Hittite territory in a strategic hill-top position (van de Mieroop 2007, 121). As such, Hattusa was the center of Hittite religion (discussed further in depth below), and it was ideally located in the middle of Anatolia's agricultural breadbasket ~ Charles River Editors

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss; To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and shipwrecked ones!
By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way - that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.
A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling: and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.
"This is now my way - where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For "the way" - it doth not exist! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The ceremonies that persist - birthdays, weddings, funerals - focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]
We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?
Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they're about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

They were enemies, they had both been very close to death and the other had done little or nothing to intervene, but actually to kill her would be very difficult.
Or maybe he only wanted to pretend that he would find it very difficult; maybe it would be no bother at all, and the sort of bogus camaraderie of doing the same job, though on different sides, was just that: a fake. ~ Iain M. Banks

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States. ~ Andrew Ross Sorkin

There is hope all around us-in every breath, in every raindrop. ~ Wesley Banks

This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on - we're hoping she'll lay." The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes. "Acherontia styx," Pilcher said. "It's named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time - did I read that?" "Yes," Starling said. "Is it rare?" "In this part of the world it is. There aren't any at all in nature. ~ Thomas Harris

Comedy often comes at the expense of others, and to do that smartly, you don't want to make fun of vulnerable people. You want to make fun of people in power, and so you need to really understand the dynamics of power. ~ Elizabeth Banks

Hindu fundamentalism," because Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals: no organized church, no compulsory beliefs or rites of worship, no single sacred book. The name itself denotes something less, and more, than a set of theological beliefs. In many languages - French and Persian amongst them - the word for "Indian" is "Hindu." Originally "Hindu" simply meant the people beyond the river Sindhu, or Indus. But the Indus is now in Islamic Pakistan; and to make matters worse, the word "Hindu" did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners gave Indians a term for self-definition. ~ Shashi Tharoor

When I was coming up, it was the golden age. It was Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, and Reese Witherspoon was starting. You really had, 'Who is America's Next Sweetheart?' every couple of years. And then this sort of bromance slacker thing took over. ~ Elizabeth Banks

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For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant. ~ Russell Banks

And although we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid. ~ Richard M. Sherman

The answer, of course, is that we are always and forever influenced by those with whom we associate. If a man keeps company with those who curse and complain - he will soon find curses and complaints flowing like a river from his own mouth. If he spends his days with the lazy - those seeking handouts - he will soon find his finances in disarray. Many of our sorrows can be traced to relationships with the wrong people. ~ Andy Andrews

He felt strangled by helplessness. ~ Maya Banks

There's a storm inside of us, a burning river, a drive. You push yourself further than anyone could think possible. You are never out of the fight. ~ Marcus Luttrell

There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank. ~ Jules Verne

God must be a smell, one of those delicious dreamy aromas that float into the soul on the warm hopeful days of spring. What is God must be one of those smells that beguile and inebriate the mind, who like a fine drunken horse of water the heart now rides, galloping wild in every direction like a river flooding right through the topsoil of your youth, cutting and eroding a groove that will be your life, a canyon sunk deep into the virgin plains and unsawn forests of your early days. ~ Martin Prechtel

Are those chocolate chip?' Cole reaches her first and claims one.
'Oh, my godness.' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. 'Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'
'River did it.' Cole smirks at the guy. 'And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'
'River Marks.' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. 'How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'
River glares at Cole before bowing his head. 'I'm sorry, Nana.'
'The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. 'Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.' 'Yes, ma'am,' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar.
'Good, good.' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. 'I'll leave you kids to your practice.' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves.
'Are you a rose?' River sneers at Cole. 'Or a lilly?'
'Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.' Cole responds. ~ Gena Showalter

That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case. ~ Paul Banks

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We had good cake," I tell Caleb. "We had fizzy drinks," he says. "Ah, but did you have a ledge overlooking an underground river?" says Marlene, waggling her eyebrows. "Or a room where you faced all your nightmares at once?" "No," says Caleb, "and to be honest, I'm kind of okay with that. ~ Veronica Roth