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Trout Quotes

Browse 167 quotes about Trout.

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Trout Quotes

“By leaving the organization of his concerts to others, Liszt sometimes fell victim to amusing errors. He once played in Marseille and included in the programme his arrangement of Schubert’s “La Truite” (“The Trout”). Owing to a printing error the piece appeared as “La Trinité,” and the unsuspecting audience sat through this bubbling music with quasi-religious reverence. When Liszt realized the mistake he got up from the piano and made an impromptu speech, asking the audience not to confuse the mysterious idea of the Trinity with Schubert’s trout, a helpful interjection which caused great hilarity.”

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Book:Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847
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“But the delight of wading that clear mountain water, scrambling over rocks, or sitting on a boulder in the sunshine and gazing with dreaming eyes into the brown pebbled pools below, was enough joy without feeling the tug of a trout on the end of the line. Often we could see them in the sun-flecked depths below, quiet as shadows except for the occasional waving of a fin.”

MemoriesChildhoodRiversFishingTrout
Book:Four Girls on a Homestead
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“Ye ken, man laird, while I just dive richt to the bottom o a linn, and set doon there; ye'd think it was the inside o the Fairy Hill. Trooties, ye ken, and saumon, and they awfu pike, a comin round ye, and they bits o water weeds, waggin aboot like lairch trees in the blast. I mind ae time I stoppit doon nigh aboot half an hour. Maybe no just sae much, ye ken, but time gaes awfu quick when ye're at the bottom o a linn.”

TroutSalmonScots LanguagePikeRiver ForthWild Swimming
Book:The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham
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“It was a good-sized trout, opened out, salted, pressed, floured and fried. The entrails had been cooked with some vinegar and mint, mashed up and spooned onto the plate as a sort of afterthought. It was delicious: simple and honest. I ate it all, and didn't give a single thought for what it might do to my humors. I sucked every bone, washed it down with some thick, spicy red wine- peasants' wine- from the hills above the town. I knew that I was tasting the place itself: the fish from the river I had crossed on my way into the town, the pig that had rooted in the woods I had ridden through, olives grown a short walk away. The pig had snuffled under the pine trees whose nuts had adorned its sausages. I had eaten the land. The town itself will always be nameless in my memory, but even now I can assemble it from its flavors, because I have never forgotten any of them. A meal of pigs' liver and fish, served with apologies.”

PigsLiverTroutSeasoningsFood And WineSurf And TurfSense Of TasteSausagesPerugia
Book:Appetite
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“The late American golfing coach and writer, Harvey Penick, held that any who played golf was his friend – in the politer sense of Arcades ambo, I gather. … I myself hold with Honest Izaak that there is – and that I am a member of – a communion of, if not saints, at least anglers and very honest men, some now with God and others of us yet upon the quiet waters. … The man is a mere brute, and no true angler, whose sport is measured only in fish caught and boasted of. For what purpose do we impose on ourselves limits and conventions if not to make sport of a mere mechanical harvest of protein? The true angler can welcome even a low river and a dry year, and learn of it, and be the better for it, in mind and in spirit. So, No: the hatch is not all that it might be, for if it is warm enough and early with it, it is also in a time of drought; and, No: I don’t get to the river as often as I should wish. But these things do not make this a poor year: they are an unlooked-for opportunity to delve yet deeper into the secrets of the river, and grow wise. … Rejoice, then, in all seasons, ye fishers. The world the river is; both you and I, And all mankind, are either fish or fry. We must view it with judicious looks, and get wisdom whilst we may. And to all honest anglers, then, I wish, as our master Izaak wished us long ago, ‘a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.”

RiversTroutAnglingFlyfishingChalk StreamsIzaak WaltonWiltshire
Author:G.M.W. Wemyss
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“The trout is still with me, as are my memories. The future is somewhere between these two forces, but it lives in mystery. The river records to trail behind or before me, and covers everything as it flows. This mountain and this river are old, yet as I wade alone, they both appear young and new to me.”

NatureMemoriesMysteryFutureFishingMountainsTroutAwake In The World
Book:The UnPeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness
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“Fly fishing is not a braggers game. There’s no glory to win. No competition or comparison between humans. It’s not about growing ego, but removing it. No fish will provide this lesson. It must come from the conscience of the angler. In the most simple explanation, fly fishing is an introspective quest to tame one’s own mind. This can be shared with others, but only discovered alone.”

NatureRiversFishingWildernessWildlifeMontanaCampingTroutFly FishingOutdoors
Book:Familiar Waters: A lifetime of fly fishing Montana
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“{W}hy did she go into the field? A twinge of pleasure, of knowledge. Her dad would pull over to the side of a bridge, and they would watch from above, before he slipped down the bank to catch them. She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, then straighten with mouths pointing upstream, to better sip a mayfly, to root up nymphs, to watch for the flash of a heron's bill. The current always trues them, like compass needles. When she watches them, she feels wise.”

TroutTrout FishingObserving NatureBecoming A ScientistRivers As Foreign Worlds
Book:Allegheny Front
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“Eli returned to the river and paused for a moment midstream. His feet were balanced upon uneven stones. The current tumbled around him. The canyon walls were steep and jagged and solid. The colors beneath the surface stirred and glittered. He wanted to hold his face under water and breathe in their beauty. He dipped his fingers into the snow-cold transient texture and felt a tingle. He closed his eyes to see this sensation clearly. He breathed. He put his hand up to his face and felt the freshness enter his soul. Water droplets dripped from his skin and returned to the river. He opened his eyes as if they were separate from his body, separate from the tension of life, distant from any distraction. He breathed.”

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Book:THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS: A Novel
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“Jimmy gave a startled yelp. She had put cute little candy cane striped glass cocktail stirrers in everyone's drinks and Jimmy had thought they were real candy canes and bitten his in half. "Goodness. I feel dreadful", Jane said to everyone while Jimmy was in the bathroom, spitting out blood and shards of glass. "Should we take him to the ER?" "Oh, he'll be fine," Duncan assured her. "He didn't go to the ER that time he accidentally locked himself into the finishing room and inhaled fumes all night." That didn't seem like the soundest piece of logic to Jane, but Jimmy came back into the room at that moment and said, "I'm OK, really Jane. I'll just keep this napkin in there to stop the bleeding." So Jimmy spent spent the rest of the evening with a white cloth napkin poking out of his mouth and looked vaguely like a trout.”

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Book:Early Morning Riser
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“When a trout rising to a fly gets hoooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freeely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.”

WorldWayHumansSometimesHardFightingCoursesLinesHuman BeingsResultsSituationStruggleEnvironmentToo MuchMastersHappeningsToughDifficultyFishesRisingSwimHookHookedTrout
Author:Karl A. Menninger
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“On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as they are... culminating in Courbet at his mightiest (The Studio, The Funeral at Ornans and a portrait of a trout that has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion).”

WholeLeftSocialMeditationCenturyTraditionCriticismStudiosRadicalImpulseDescriptionFuneralPortraits19th CenturyRealistCrucifixionTroutRubens
Author:Gustave Courbet
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“Before we go there and set up greenhouses, dance clubs, and falafel stands, let's make sure that, in some subtle form that could be harmed by the human hubbub, life does not already exist there. If not, then by all means build cities, plant forests and fill lakes and streams with trout -- bring life to Mars and Mars to life. We'll then be the Martians we've been dreaming about for all these years.”

IfsYearsHumansMeanDoeDreamFormCitiesPlantClubsForestsStreamsLakesSubtleMarsGreenhousesTroutMartians
Author:David Grinspoon
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“It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.”

PeopleWellsPersonsUseHappensWaterKnownSeaObjectsTasteTrainingRiversRegardMethodFishesReputationBoatLakesFishingSolePrimitiveWell KnownWormsIndulgeBaitTroutSportsman
Book:In the Wilderness
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“There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name 'Salmo Ferox'. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and administer the coup de grace. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff.”

ShouldMadeNamesStuffGraceSeaLandRiversTiredSpeciesFishesMonstersCrueltyBoatAweLakesFishingImmenseScotlandUnnaturalTroutCoups
Author:Arnold Gingrich
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“It is utterly soothing to fly fish for trout. All other considerations or worries drift away and you couldn't keep them close if you wanted. Perhaps it's standing thigh deep in a river with the water passing at the exact but varying speed of life. You easily recognize this mortality and it dissipates into the landscape.”

IfsWantedWaterWorrySeaStandingRiversFishesSpeedPassingPassingsBoatLandscapeLakesConsiderationFishingMortalitySoothingThighsTrout
Book:True North
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“It's so silly isn't it? how we grown men take up trout angling not simply to pursue trout but to find some place, some special place, where we feel at ease. a place to belong. Forces, not forms, persist: energy is spent and endures; time does not tick, it flows. God loves a man that smells of trout water and mountain meadows. Which way's heaven, you suppose? Follow the trail and keep close to the stream.”

MenWayFeelsDoeFormEnergyForceHeavenWaterSeaSpecialMountainFlowRiversEndureFishesSmellSillyPursueBoatGod LoveEaseStreamsLakesFishingPersistTrailsMeadowsTickTroutSpecial PlacesAnglingGrown Man
Author:Carey Mulligan
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“Catching fish is not a mental game between fish and angler. A 'smart' trout is only smarter than other trout, not smarter than a fisherman. An angler must take the puzzle of the day's conditions, and matching those conditions and his knowledge of the fish come up with a good catch. He competes with a concept, not with a fish's brain.”

GamesBrainSeaConditionsSmartConceptsRiversFishesCome UpBoatLakesFishingSmarterPuzzlesCatchingFishermanTroutMatchingAnglersCatching Fish
Author:Lee Wulff
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“When the word began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not met with universal approval in the fly-fishing community. It seems that worms had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of mine hit it on the head when he said, It just pisses them off that you can catch trout, I mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year old can tie in twenty seconds!”

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Book:Fly Fishing the Tailwaters
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“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.”

IfsThreeFoundLostSeaRiversCaughtFishesStoresBoatDepartmentLakesFishingEnteringCanyonsTroutStaircasesDepartment StoresLost And Found
Book:Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; And, In Watermelon Sugar
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“Flyfishing does have its social aspects - on some of our crowded trout streams it can get too social - but esentially it's a solitary, contemplative sport. People are left alone with themselves in beautiful surroundings to try to accomplish something that seems to have genuine value.”

PeopleTryingDoeSeemsBeautifulValuesLeftSocialSportsSeaAspectRiversFishesAccomplishGenuineBoatStreamsLakesFishingSolitarySurroundingsCrowdedLeft AloneContemplativeTrout
Author:John Gierach
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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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