Selvagens Islands Quotes

We Never Said Farewell

We never said farewell, nor even looked
Our last upon each other, for no sign
Was made when we the linkèd chain unhooked
And broke the level line.

And here we dwell together, side by side,
Our places fixed for life upon the chart.
Two islands that the roaring seas divide
Are not more far apart. ~ Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms ~ Bruno Latour

What you see is what you get. The island is imaginative enough. Creativity don't need to be wasted on naming things. ~ Doug Cooper

I've always felt England was a great place for a comic to work. It's an island and the audience can't run very far. ~ Bob Hope

In midmost of the stream, embraced in the weir's shimmering arm-spread, a small island lay anchored, fringed close with willow and silver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of significance, it hid whatever it might hold behind a veil, keeping it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called and chosen. ~ Kenneth Grahame

Puerto Rico is an island separated by an ocean, a language, a culture. All of that put it in a position where it's like, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but what happened in Puerto Rico never happened at all. It's not like there was a decades-long conspiracy. It's just the aggregation of all these historical forces made it difficult for this information to exist in one place. ~ Nelson Antonio Denis

I have seen," he said, "the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an idea of what the waterspout must be on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud: but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river, that I never before saw equalled. Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely, the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier, or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country. "Clerval! beloved frie ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Contemporary culture encourages us to make islands of ourselves for the sake of self-fulfillment, of career advancement, of entertainment, of diversion, and all the demands of the sovereign self. When suffering and death come for you--and it will--you want to be in a place where you know, and are known. You want--no, you need--to be able to say, as Mike did, "We're leaning, but we're leaning on each other. ~ Rod Dreher

In my own creations, the earliest influence came from the ancient civilisations of Egypt, China, Africa and Persia. In fact, one of my earlier creations was a range of tunics, made from silk procured from the islands of Madagascar. ~ Mary McFadden

I just need to go to like an island or something, ~ Andre Johnson

Perhaps that was the reason she felt so hemmed in. Islands were places in between; places neither here nor there, but rather places on the way somewhere. That was how she felt. Not settled. ~ Kimberley Freeman

The expansion of Europe had begun. Before it ended, in our own time, the greater part of the world, including the scattered islands of the Pacific, was to be seized by an insatiable civilization, greedy for spices or for realms of gold; for land, mere novelty, or for souls. ~ Keith Sinclair

The Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean are a six-day boat ride from Madagascar, and their only inhabitants are French scientists. ~ Cary McNeal

The island is in Kenya, the water is in Uganda ... But the [Luos, a Kenyan ethnic group] are mad, they want to fish here but this is Uganda. ~ Yoweri Museveni

People are like their own ecosystems, little planets made up of islands and climates and forecasts. Some of us carry jagged mountain peaks, and some of us carry lakes. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

At the piping of all hands,When the judgment-signal's spread-When the islands and the landsAnd the seas give up their dead,And the South and North shall come;When the sinner is dismayed,And the just man is afraid,Then Heaven be thy aid,Poor Tom. ~ John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. ~ Julie Powell

Climate change knows no borders. It will not stop before the Pacific islands and the whole of the international community here has to shoulder a responsibility to bring about a sustainable development. ~ Angela Merkel

Of course often those places went very cheap - islands didn't suit everybody. They thought the idea was romantic but when they came to live there they realised the disadvantages and were only too glad to sell. ~ Agatha Christie

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this."
I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.
"Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea."
"The board-schools."
"Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there
is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn
away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to
hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the
solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind
collects itself and courage gauges its strength? ~ Albert Camus

It was a palace, made entirely of gold, sitting on an island of silver snow at the very top of the world. East of the sun, and west of the moon. ~ Jessica Day George

When I first started, it was the real basic stuff that was being played on the radio, so I was into Zeppelin, and Sabbath, and AC/DC, and all stuff like that. I grew up in New York, on Long Island, so the local radio stations played all that kind of thing. ~ John Petrucci

Paradise" is a suffering word, grossly overused and ineptly devalued in everyday hype and blurb. Yet, tired as it is, it will have to do. Nothing else conveys that sense of place that can inspire a blissful contentment. ~ Andrew Rayner

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake's edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother
holding out a plate of little cakes -

as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age
hungry for life, utterly confident -

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green
pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly. ~ Louise Gluck

The Gili Islands gave me some of my best scuba diving experiences, including tons of turtles. ~ Natalie Dormer

Two of the actors, Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom, have been caught between two landslides and are now trapped in a tiny town in the middle of the South Island. They have been taken in by a kindly woman who has offered them food and a bed. They were last reported to be cooking spaghetti and cracking into a bottle of red wine. ~ Peter Jackson

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

When we have had some of these slaves on board my master's vessels to carry them to other islands, or to America, I have known our mates to commit these acts most shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men. I have even known them gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old; and these abominations some of them practised to such scandalous excess, that one of our captains discharged the mate and others on that account. ~ Olaudah Equiano

At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely. ~ James A. Michener

Islands are natural workshops of evolution. ~ Richard Dawkins

It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad. ~ David R. Brower

The place of exciting innovation - where the action is - that's Rhode Island! ~ Donald L. Carcieri

I'm an island boy, so I love my reggae and soca music. ~ Dule Hill

As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I love being naked. I do everything in the nude, even the gardening! We're Cuban, and it's a hot island. Why not go nude? ~ Eva Mendes

Hy gododin catann hue Hud a lledrith mal wyddan Gaunce ae bellawn wen cabri Varigal don Fincayra Dravia, dravia Fincayra (Talking trees and walking stones, Giants aare the island's bones. While this land our dance still knows, Varigal crowns Fincayra. Live long, live long Fincayra. ~ T.A. Barron