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Sea Quotes

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Sea Quotes

“Here when the labouring fish does at the foot arrive, And finds that by his strength but vainly he doth strive; His tail takes in his teeth, and bending like a bow, That's to the compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw: Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand, That, bended end to end, and flerted from the hand, Far off itself doth cast. so does the salmon vaut. And if at first he fail, his second sommersault He instantly assays and from his nimble ring, Still yarking never leaves, Until himself he fling Above the streamful top of the surrounded heap.”

Ifs Firsts Littles Doe Stills Ends Hands Failing Sea Feet Rivers Strive Casts Fishes Rings Teeth Boat Height Lakes Fishing Bows Tails Compass Fling Bending Wands Salmon Nimble

Author:Michael Drayton

“Most fishing rods work better if you grasp them at the thick end. If you grasp a fisherman at the thick end, you may get a thumb bit off.”

Ifs May Ends Bits Sea Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Thick Thumbs Fisherman

Author:Ed Zern

“If you want to catch more fish, more often, take luck out of your fishing equation and replace it with knowledge of fish, their habitat and behavior, and you will make your own luck.”

Ifs Want Sea Behavior Rivers Luck Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Equations Habitat

Author:Tony Bishop

“There is a lot of amiable fantasy written about trout fishing, but the truth is that few men know much if anything about the habits of trout and little more about the manner of taking them.”

Ifs Knows Men Littles Fantasy Written Sea Habit Truth Is Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Trout Amiable Trout Fishing

Author:John D. Voelker

“Most fisherman, including this one, cling to their pet stupidities as they would to a battered briar or an old jacket; and their dogged persistence in wrong methods and general wrong-headedness finally wins the a sort of grudging admiration, if not many fish.”

Ifs Winning Sea Rivers Method Including Fishes Stupidity Boat Persistence Pet Lakes Fishing Admiration Jackets Fisherman Battered Briars

Author:John D. Voelker

“I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department.”

Source: Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; And, In Watermelon Sugar

“If all the theories were correct, there wouldn't be a fish left in all of our lakes and rivers and streams.”

Ifs Left Sea Theory Rivers Fishes Boat Streams Lakes Fishing Lakes And Rivers

Author:Izaak Walton

“Use the longest leader you can handle. Usually you can handle one much longer than you imagine. Remember that the purpose of the leader is to conceal artificiality. If you believe a leader is at all necessary then you must admit that the longer the leader the better chances you have for success”

Ifs Believe Use Remember Purpose Chance Leader Imagine Sea Rivers Fishes Handle Boat Lakes Fishing If You Believe Artificiality

Book:Trout

Source: Trout

“Make all approaches to the stream with care and caution. Remember that once you are seen you are a great disadvantage if not completely defeated”

Ifs Care Remember Sea Approach Rivers Fishes Boat Streams Lakes Fishing Defeated Caution Disadvantages

Book:Trout

Source: Trout

“If your rod weighs six ounces, your reel nine, and your line another ounce or two, it means that you are holding a pound of weight in your casting hand - much of the time at arm's length - all the time you fish. Try carrying a pound of butter around that way for four or five hours.”

Ifs Way Trying Mean Two Hands Hours Lines Five Four Sea Arms Six Rivers Weight Fishes Nine Boat Lakes Fishing Pounds Length Casting

Author:Ted Trueblood

“I doubt if I shall ever outgrow the excitement bordering on panic which I feel the instant I know I have a strong, unmanageable fish, be it brook trout, brown trout, cutthroat, rainbow, steelhead or salmon on my line.”

Ifs Knows Feels Strong Lines Doubt Sea Rivers Fishes Boat Excitement Instant Brown Lakes Fishing Panic Rainbow Brooks Trout Salmon

Author:Ed Weeks

“Contrary to common belief, it is not true that if you cut a worm-fisherman in half, each half will grow into a complete fisherman. For which we should all be eternally grateful.”

Ifs Should Belief Grows Common Half Cutting Sea Rivers Grateful Fishes Contrary Boat Lakes Fishing Worms Fisherman

Author:Ed Zern

“Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.”

Ifs Wells Use Hands Form Sea Rivers Stones Fishes Surface Boat Lakes Fishing Pool Caps Blast Handy Trout Stunned Grenade Trout Fishing

Book:A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

“Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.”

Ifs Shows Beautiful Spirit Felt Water Sea Elements Rivers Privilege Fishes Boat Granted Lakes Fishing Show Me Marvellous Inscrutable

Author:Zane Grey

“And if ye angler take fysshe; surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte.”

Ifs Men Sea Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Anglers

Author:Juliana Berners

“Stalking along from log to log, or plunging their long legs in the oozy swamp, two large herons paid no attention to my presence, but occupied themselves with their own fishing arrangements, as if their wilderness were their own.”

Ifs Long Two Attention Sea Rivers Paid Fishes Legs Boat Lakes Fishing Wilderness Arrangements Stalking Swamps Long Legs Herons

Book:I Go A-fishing

Source: I Go A-fishing

“These are the technicalities. The jetes and pirouettes.. but the music of the dance lies in the subtle signals between the steps: the fish's delivery of them, the fisherman's read of and response to them, which, if she's good, must be near telepathic. That's what takes a death-grip on your concentration. That's why your mind empties of all trivia, which, when playing a fish, includes just about everything else you could possible think of. That is what anglers live for.”

Ifs Thinking Mind Lying Steps Sea Rivers Response Fishes Boat Lakes Subtle Fishing Concentration Signals Delivery Fisherman Trivia Anglers Technicalities Pirouettes

Author:Jessica Maxwell

“As much as anything, the anglers will clue you in to the midge hatch. You will see them hunched over in concentration like herons. The better ones will be in as close as they can get to the dimpling trout. What you'll notice is the rythmic flicking of casts toward a porpoising trout and the lack of any other motions. The only exception will be the gentle tug that sets a very small hook attached to the leader by a very delicate tippet. The playing of the trout, if it is a good one, will be a cat-and-mouse sort of ecstacy.”

Ifs Leader Sea Rivers Cat Casts Fishes Boat Gentle Lakes Exception Fishing Concentration Delicate Mice Clue Hook Trout Anglers Herons Cat And Mouse Midges

Author:Ed Engle

“Fish in the water represent pure potential. If the water is not clear, we do not know if they exist at all. To get them to bite something connected to a line and pull them into our world is managing a birth that brings these creatures from the realm of mysytery into the world of reality. It is a kind of creation.”

Ifs Knows World Kind Reality Water Lines Clear Sea Creation Birth Pure Creatures Rivers Fishes Connected Boat Realms Lakes Fishing Our World Bites

Author:Howell Raines

“Finally from the crease of the ravine I am following, there begins to come the trickling and splashing of water. There is a great restfulness in the sounds these small streams make; they are going down as fast as they can, but their sound seem leisurely and idle, as if produced like gemstones with the greatest patience and care.”

Ifs Seems Care Sound Water Sea Rivers Fishes Following Boat Streams Lakes Fishing Idle Splashing

Author:Wendell Berry

“Fish slowly and thoroughly. Haste never paid dividends. Never wory about the fellow ahead of you. If you start racing to get ahaead of him, he'll probably try to beat you, and from then on it will be nothing but a foot-race instead of a contemplative and inspiring recreation.”

Ifs Trying Race Sea Feet Beats Rivers Paid Fellows Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Racing Haste Recreation Contemplative Dividends

Author:Ray Bergman

“When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.”

“So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.”

Ifs Made Said Two Three Chance Sea Example Ten Rivers Twenties Foundation Assuming Finals Caught Fishes Boat Thirty Lakes Fishing Forty Arrangements

Book:Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog

“If you're a fish and you want to be a fish-stick, you have to have very good posture.”

Ifs Want Humor Funny Sea Rivers Sticks Very Good Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Posture Good Posture

Author:Mitch Hedberg

“It would be a miracle of God if it happened. I know it... If God wills it, the summer rains will fill the wadis... and the salmon will run the river. And then my countrymen... all classes and manner of men-will stand side by side and fish for the salmon. And their natures, too, will be changed. They will feel the enchantment of this silver fish... and then when talk turns to what this tribe said or that tribe did... then someone will say, Let us arise, and go fishing.”

“If you aren't a fisher you'll see many things, but the river, except where it is ridden by waterfowl or waded by moose, will rarely enter your thoughts, much less stimulate your spirit. It's different if you fish. The surface of the water tells a story.”

Ifs Different Stories Spirit Water Sea Rivers Fishes Surface Boat Lakes Fishing Moose

Book:Mountain Time: A Yellowstone Memoir

Source: Mountain Time: A Yellowstone Memoir

“If you keep at it long enough, one day you may witness some greater disturbance, some rushing breach of the water's surface so startling and violent and exhilarating that you too will suddenly, and always thereafter, believe in monsters.”

Source: The Fishing Life: An Angler's Tales of Wild Rivers and Other Restless Metaphors

“About the only certainty, other than uncertainty, in fly fishing is that a fly won't catch fish if it stays in its box.”

Ifs Sea Rivers Fishes Boxes Boat Certainty Uncertainty Lakes Fishing Fly Fishing

Book:The Joys of Trout

Source: The Joys of Trout

“If we become conceited through great success, some day the trout will take us down a peg.”

Ifs Sea Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Great Success Conceited Trout Peg

Book:The Complete Fly Fisherman

Source: The Complete Fly Fisherman

“The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness, and they have also learned - in the grimmest of schools - precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong.”

Ifs Character School Found Water Sea Essentials England Blue Endure Resolution Precision Blue Water

Book:Nelson's History of the war

Source: Nelson's History of the war

“We forget today that Britain still depends for its livelihood and, indeed, its day-to-day survival, on the sea. But the Royal Navy is now pitifully small and has been reduced in size by the current Government, seeking economies to finance its social programmes. Fine while there is no threat to our security. But what use would schools and hospitals be if we could not protect our imports?”

“Whether in peaceful trade or warlike attack, the sea unites more than it divides. Even if it were possible to treat England, or the British Isles, as a single, homogenous, united nation, it would still be impossible to write its naval history without reference to the histories of the other nations, near and far, with which the sea has connected it.”

Ifs Writing Stills Nations United Impossible Sea Treats England Trade Connected British Peaceful Divides United Nations Naval Isle Near And Far

Author:Nicholas Rodger

“If anyone decided to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to give liquor its right name, so be it; and let him dub the round world "Mother of the Gods" so long as he is careful not really to infest his mind with base superstitions.”

Ifs World Giving Mind Long Mother Names Sea Atheism Decided Rounds Careful Positive Atheism Superstitions Corn Liquor Bacchus Neptune Round World

Author:Lucretius

“Get your tickets now. Buy cable now. Get your jerseys now. Pull your boats up to the docking stations now. Bring your Sea-Doos now. If you can't afford a Sea-Doo, get a raft.”

Ifs Sea Basketball Boat Stations Nba Tickets Jersey Cables

Author:Shaquille O'Neal

“If we were building our navy, rather than reducing our navy to pre-World War I levels, China would not be thinking about increasing its navy to take over the South China Sea.”

Ifs Thinking World War Levels Sea Building South China War Of The Worlds World War I Navy Reducing

Author:Rudy Giuliani

“If time is my vessel, then learning to love might be my way back to sea”

Ifs Way Might Sea My Way Vessel Learning To Love

Author:Paul Banks

“There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

People Ifs Thinking Men Should Years Seems Fall Answers Class Sea Twenties Legs Pockets Overboard

Author:Frederick Douglass

“The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.”

Ifs Sea Sky Ocean Wrinkles

Book:The Waves

Source: The Waves

“I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.”

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales

“A very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.”

Ifs May Clear Sea Return Depth Calm Pearls Wrecks

Book:Carlyle Reader

Source: Carlyle Reader

“What money creates, money preserves: if thy wealth decays, thy honor dies; it is but a slippery happiness which fortunes can give, and frowns can take; and not worth the owning which a night's fire can melt, or a rough sea can drown.”

Ifs Giving Night Dies Wealth Fire Sea Honor Fortune Preserves Rough Decay Slippery Rough Seas

Author:Francis Quarles

“If you want to know all about the sea ... and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble grumble swish swish. It is too busy being itself to know anything about itself.”

Ifs Knows Want Doe Asks Sea Busy Too Busy

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence. If the lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these, between their exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness.”

Ifs Book Soul Body Remember Forget Existence Sea Conditions Opposites Forgetfulness True Ones

Book:The Nazarene

Source: The Nazarene

“the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.”

Ifs Should Writing Book Strong Sea Tears Weak Calves Strong Mind Strong Minded

Author:Winifred Holtby

“our sons and daughters are only passing through. ... If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first.”

Ifs Firsts Children Home Sea Son Lucky Daughter Passing Passings Harbors Passing Through Son And Daughter

Book:The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship

Source: The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship

“If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns.”

Ifs Should Humans Heart Inspiration Would Be Sea Listening Ocean Draws Infinite Shells Human Heart Hollow Sea Shell

Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin

“If the enemy thinks of the mountains, attack like the sea; and if he thinks of the sea, attack like the mountains.”

Ifs Thinking Enemy Sea Mountain

Book:Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

Source: Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

“Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little that occurs around him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, "deep calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machinery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the sea is to show the stars.”

Ifs Firsts Humans Wells Littles Shows Stars Voice Struggle Meditation Wonderful Sea Hero Calling Labor Storm Noble Noise Machinery Quietness Clamor

Author:James Vila Blake

“Frankly, the trouble with winter is, it is all backbone. It is fleshless, insensate, with neither a breast to be leaned on nor a heart to love and ache and, if need be, break, nor any kindly hand to fondle and caress like a sea-wave on a sunny shore half asleep.”

Ifs Needs Heart Hands Half Break Trouble Sea Winter Wave Breasts Shore Ache Sunny Backbone Caress

Author:William Alfred Quayle

“It must not be supposed that happiness will demand many or great possessions; for self-sufficiency does not depend on excessive abundance, nor does moral conduct, and it is possible to perform noble deeds even without being ruler of land and sea: one can do virtuous acts with quite moderate resources. This may be clearly observed in experience: private citizens do not seem to be less but more given to doing virtuous actions than princes and potentates. It is sufficient then if moderate resources are forthcoming; for a life of virtuous activity will be essentially a happy life.”