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Surface Quotes

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Surface Quotes

“Standing on the Moon looking back at Earth - this lovely place you just came from - you see all the colours, and you know what they represent. Having left the water planet, with all that water brings to Earth in terms of colour and abudance life, the absence of water and atmosphere on the desolate surface of the Moon gives rise to a stark contrast.”

KnowsGivingEarthLeftTermWaterPlanetsMoonStandingSurfaceAbsenceLovelyAtmosphereColourContrastLooking BackStarksDesolate
Author:Buzz Aldrin
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“A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing.”

ArtFormWaterSeaFineSafeStandardsPercentAppreciateRiversFishesSurfaceBoatLakesFishingPreciseFeedingInsectsPercentagesFine ArtsImmatureFishermanTroutAnglersFisheries
Book:Fly Fishing the Tailwaters
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“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.”

IfsBelieveMayLongEnoughWaterGreaterSeaOne DayRiversFishesSurfaceMonstersViolentBoatWitnessLakesFishingRushingExhilaratingDisturbanceBreach
Book:The Fishing Life: An Angler's Tales of Wild Rivers and Other Restless Metaphors
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“The phrase 'contrary to all expectations' rings through the story of the progress of human knowledge. It was 'contrary to all expectations' that the Earth was found to revolve around the sun, and not the other way round, and that a mould growing in one of Dr. Alexander Fleming's dishes was found to be capable of destroying bacteria. When in 1989 the spacecraft Voyager 2 got close enough to the planet Naptune to take detailed pictures of the surface, they were 'contrary to all expectations'.”

WayHumansEnoughStoriesEarthScienceFoundSunGrowingProgressPlanetsCapableExpectationsRoundsSurfaceContraryRingsPhrasesDestroyingDishesDrsMouldBacteriaHuman KnowledgeSpacecraft
Author:Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart
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“Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.”

IfsThinkingShouldMindSeemsAtheismHabitOrdinaryPositive AtheismSurfaceCreedsAnarchismBulliedRenunciationPacifismHabits Of MindDirtiness
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.”

BookStatesHumanityLostWaterImaginationInterestingSeaLandDangerousPlanetsCivilizationLessonsNormalOppositesDifficultyIncreaseErrorsBoundsSpreadSurfaceSaltBarbarismHistory BooksSavageryRaritySalt Water
Book:Image and Imagination
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“Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyonwith a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.”

MomentsArtistEasyDifficultSimpleEmotionFocusTalentPhotographyCamerasPhotographerSurfaceMediumsFixedNativeContradictionConceptionInstructionRecallsBlankFormidableShutters
Author:Edward Steichen
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“Everything - a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being - is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg. Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came. Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself.”

ThinkingWayHumansShowsRealityHuman BeingsSimpleTreeFlowerSourceBirdStonesDepthAppearanceConnectedSurfacePerceiveLayersUnfathomableIceberg
Book:A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
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“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life's fabric, to the world's beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

WorldMayDoeIdeasMatterEnoughEarthBeautifulLife IsWishMy OwnExistenceReturnNo Matter WhatMereSurfaceJustifyGesturesFabricSentimental
Author:Frank O'Hara
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“What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. ... What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.”

PeopleWorldBookMatterFeelingsWantedImaginationSubjectsEventsGeniusDepthExtremesSurfaceOriginalityInteriorsSubject MatterRaptureThoughts And FeelingsWildnessMatchedExaltation
Book:An American Childhood
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“Spurn not a seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth.”

ErrorsSurfaceSeeming
Book:Gems from Tupper: Consisting of Extracts from the Following Works: Proverbial Philosophy; Thousand Lines; Twins; Hactenus; An Authr's Mind; Geraldine, and Other Poems; Heart; Crock of Gold; and Probabilities, an Aid to Faith
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“Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it!”

WayWritingTryingIdeasSoulSeemsThreeSimpleEmotionPrinciplesMagicExcitingOriginalsSurfaceSubstanceDamnPositivelyStirringIcebergRetaining
Author:Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
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“... not only is life put in new patterns from the air, but it is somehow arrested, frozen into form. (The leaping hare is caught in a marble panel.) A glaze is put over life. There is no flaw, no crack in the surface; a still reservoir, no ripple on its face. Looking down from the air that morning, I felt that stillness rested like a light over the earth. The waterfalls seemed frozen solid; the tops of the trees were still; the river hardly stirred, a serpent gently moving under its shimmering skin.”

StillsLightEarthFacesMovingFormFeltMorningAirTreeRiversSkinsPatternsCaughtSurfaceFlawsCracksStillnessFrozenArrestedMarbleRippleSerpentReservoirsWaterfallsLooking DownHares
Author:Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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“Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.”

IfsLyingInterestStudyEventsAppearanceSurfaceSeedsHistorianBiographiesDelightfulUtilityTrue LifeToo DeepGreat Events
Book:The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
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“The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy.”

MenWorldYearsChildrenEarthLyingEnergyWealthProgressHe ManDepthSurfaceTreasureCivilizedImmensePsychicsConstructiveNoticingInfancyUnnoticed
Author:Maria Montessori
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“Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.”

MenFeelsShouldHumansMayPersonsIdeasCharacterLyingOrderHuman BeingsSecretGroupsTraditionClimateSurfaceCoreEvery ManMysteriousConquerDefeatedVermontBelow The Surface
Author:Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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“A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.”

WellsSelfCharacterFormWishNaturalEventsActivityShapesEvidenceLettersComplexesAffectionSurfaceDialogueCardsMaskServingFabricTestimonySelf CenteredAssertionSelf ServingOmniscient
Book:Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
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