Quotes & Sayings About Albatross

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. — Robert A. Heinlein

Tradition is the albatross around the neck of progress. — Bill Veeck

Ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say.
I do. But I like to hear you say it.
Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down ... tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens ... makes her a home. — Joss Whedon

If (my grandfather) hadn't left, I'd be working over here at the Albatross Company. — John F. Kennedy

I have consumed more drink than the first
one hundred men you will pass
on the street
or meet in the madhouse.
I scratch my belly and dream of the
albatross.
I have joined the great drunks of
the centuries:
Li Po, Toulouse-Lautrec, Crane, Faulkner.
I have been selected
but by whom? — Charles Bukowski

That girl will rain destruction down on you and your ship. She is an albatross, Captain.
Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it. (to Inara) Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint. — Joss Whedon

Why look'st thou so?' - With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. — Jacqueline Woodson

At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross
at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. — Edgar Allan Poe

I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks. — Seamus Heaney

But veteran lawmakers torn apart by PTSD don't have a choice about being Exhibit A in the case against Washington politics. When you see what can happen to a page or a junior congressman, it passes on in a very real way, not in a history-class sense, that reality of what political power really is, .. Who are we to impose this emotional albatross on public servants? As a nation, we pretend to elect our leaders. It seems unjust to make them a special class to suffer for our sins over wrongheaded laws, or pay a continuing emotional price for securing their future careers. — Leon Kass

Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! ... It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water. — Malcolm Lowry

When you're in the middle of nowhere, when you're on this tiny little island, probably one of ten people ever to step foot on this island, it's taken you a week to get there by boat - and you step near to an albatross nest. It doesn't even look at you as the enemy. You get this great nature moment. Until you realize the albatross, along with the thousands of other winged albatrosses next to it, has constructed its nest of trash. — Jeff Corwin

Pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of the Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast high ceilings and few horsepower! — John Green

I certainly never doubted the ability for the guys to get together and make good music, but there was so much legal business with the record company that it ended up being like five albatrosses around our neck. — John Bush

I pick up my journal, mug, and granola bar wrapper, look up to the sky, and curse the God of Summer Vacations for getting me into this whole albatross-ditching, Sam-avoiding, aiding-and-abetting mess in the first place. — Sarah Ockler

'A Chorus Line' never dies; it just keeps opening doors and giving back to me - but there was a time when I considered it an albatross around my neck. — Donna McKechnie

A great number of soundings, mainly along the continental slope of the New England States were also taken by the vessels of the United States Fish Commission. Important soundings were made by the United States Fish Commission steamer ALBATROSS in the Caribbean, during the winter of 1883-1884. — Alexander Agassiz

They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car, and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast of high ceilings and few horsepower! — John Green

I filmed 'Albatross' before I got 'Downton.' It's a coming-of-age movie about this girl who leaps into this family's life, like a whirlwind. She's ballsy and brash and wonderful, it was such an amazing character to play. — Jessica Brown Findlay

The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a white albatross, each local rep has a cover known as the Ego, and their mission in this world is Bad Shit. We do know what's going on, and we let it go on. As long as we can see them, stare at them, those massively moneyed, once in a while. As long as they allow us a glimpse, however rarely. We need that. And they know it - how often, under what conditions ... — Thomas Pynchon

It does the things we're also most concerned about. It tries very hard to stay alive. It's motivated to reproduce. It gets hungry and goes to look for food. It gets frightened. Compared to other things in the universe, we and the albatrosses are almost identical. — Carl Safina

The albatross' big feet and its great white wings are the same thing. — Giles Deleuze

He was like a huge smug albatross waddling around my desk, squawking vacuously and crapping all over my paperwork. — Tana French

Once you decide that it is the art that is important and not how popular and well received you are, you no longer have an albatross. — Stephen Stills

Called by the sirens and followed by an albatross. — Lydia Millet

You have never asked for anything, yet you have become an albatross around my neck. Your bony arms are knotted behind my head, I walk bowed under the weight of you. — J.M. Coetzee

I shot the ALBATROSS. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes - A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers. Even our shadows are blue with cold. We wanted to see the sun come up And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship, Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost, Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay Encased in a glassy pellicle. The — Sylvia Plath

Keating can be somewhat liberal with the profanity, so I shall substitute the word 'albatross' where necessary, and you may read that part privately later. — Suzanne Enoch

The selfmoment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

However, it's usually random acts of good intent, like this one, which get you into the worst trouble in the long run. They say that if you want to change the world then you should be that change you want to see. Well that's what Gandhi said and see what they did to him. Ya, random acts of good intent are the ones that just might get you killed. The further you stick your neck out for others the more likely it's going to chopped, or at least get a large heavy albatross around it. — Andrew James Pritchard

Of all the ships that have been devoted to biological explorations of the sea, none has surpassed the endeavors conducted on board the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross, during her 39 years of service from 1882 to 1921. — Paul Bartsch

The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority ... the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started at grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate, or to have mothers who were about to hare off with some bloke, or to have dead fathers and shabby stepfathers. What busy lives they led. How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty. — Martin Amis

The creatures of the sea hold special mystery, and they are among the most exciting, graceful, and beautiful on Earth. Just consider the living riot of a coral reef, the beauty of an albatross, the awesome power of a giant turtle, the grace of a dolphin. Now multiply that by the millions of creatures in the sea. Wow! — Carl Safina

I am locked in a very expensive suit
old elegant and enduring
Only my hair has been able to get free
but someone has been leaving
their dandruff in it
Now I will tell you
all there is to know about optimism
Each day in hub cap mirror
in soup reflection
in other people's spectacles
I check my hair
for an army of alpinists
for Indian rope trick masters
for tangled aviators
for dove and albatross
for insect suicides
for abominable snowmen
I check my hair
for aerialists of every kind
Dedicated as an automatic elevator
I comb my hair for possibilities
I stick my neck out
I lean illegally from locomotive windows
and only for the barber
do I wear a hat — Leonard Cohen

Would you mind telling Xavier that if
he doesn't want to become an albatross,
he should stop laughing, Evie mutters,
which only makes him laugh harder. — Amy A. Bartol

Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena. — Robert Byrd

I think that America certainly has racism, I think that any industrialized country does. But when you see how many million fans Barack Obama has who are not black, it would lead one to the conclusion that millions of Americans are in fact not burdened by the albatross of racism. — Henry Rollins

View the past as your enemy, and it will be an albatross.
View it as your friend, and it will give you wings. — Alan Cohen

The significance of a revolution will be known after the days have gone past us. When the children of the coming years wake up and like the albatross glide across the azure sky.The freedom to live a life of meaning and joy. — Avijeet Das

It's the spring of 2012, that the [Barak] Obama administration would be embracing the argument that the Affordable Care Act was a tax, and that was going to, itself, be a political albatross. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

In its lifetime, an albatross is believed to fly around fifteen million miles. To put that into perspective, it is the same as flying half way to Mars when it is at its closest distance to the Earth. — Jack Goldstein

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The wide receiver had a real taste for crime, and he indulged it with an erratic kind of vigor that made him an albatross for Madden and a natural soulmate for my old friend, Al Davis, who remains the ultimate Raider. They were serious people, and John Madden was definitely one of them, for good or ill. Living with the Oakland Raiders in those days was not much different than living with the Hell's Angels. I — Hunter S. Thompson

He closed his eyes. Swiftly like a predator, the vision of his death struck. This time it would not be denied.
The white ground, black rocks, and red drops of his heart's blood growing on the ground like blooming roses. He lost himself in the sensation of liquid warmth flowing between his fingers.
When he could finally see again, he found himself kneeling on the floor, shoulders hunched. That damned scene hung like an albatross around his neck, until he almost wished it would go ahead and happen, just so that he could get it the fuck over with.
He had carried that albatross for almost two hundred damn years - exactly from the moment when he had responded to a damsel in distress and had embroiled himself in another man's curse. — Thea Harrison

To be ultra is to go beyond. is to attack the scepter in the name of the throne, and the miter in the name of the alter; it is to mistreat the thing you support; it is to kick in the traces; is is to cavil at the stake for undercooking heretics; it is to reproach the idol for lack of idolatry; it is to insult through an excess of respect; it is to find to little papistry in the pope; in the king to little royalty, and too much light in the night; it is to be dissatisfied with the albatross, with snow ,with the swan, and the lily for not being white enough; it is to champion things to the point of becoming their enemy, it is to become so pro you become con. — Victor Hugo

The albatross hit the top and canted her soft belly to the storm, and made a screaming banked peel-out downwind and over the other side. I don't know if anyone else on the ship saw her. To me, she was a visitation. Not harbinger or annunciation, but a simple reminder of a wold that worked, that was at home with itself and friends with storm. — Peter Heller

I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either. — David Byrne

How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two VOICES in the air. "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low, The harmless Albatross. "The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow." The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, "The man hath penance done, And penance more will do. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross. — Patrick White

The only albatross is the hurt you divine from what people say about your art. — Stephen Stills

As for me, I used to be a bird
with a gentle white womb,
someone cut my throat
just for laughs,
I don't know.
As for me, I used to be a great albatross
and whirled over the seas.
Someone put an end to my journey,
without any charity in the tone of it.
But even stretched out on the ground
I sing for you now
my songs of love. — Alda Merini

Yep, it's who I think it is. My step-albatross. — Kim Linwood