Quotes & Sayings About Below The Surface

The more familiar people are with the ecosystem that lives below the surface - invisible until you're actually in the ocean - the more likely they are to do what they can to protect it. — Jon Bowermaster

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. — C. G. Jung

The real truth lies below the surface. — Bohdi Sanders

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life. — Bertrand Russell

How do we meditate silently? Just by not talking, just by not using outer words, we are not doing silent meditation. Silent meditation is totally different. When we start meditating in silence, right from the beginning we feel the bottom of a sea within us and without. The life of activity movement and restlessness is on the surface, but deep below, underneath our human life, there is poise and silence. So, either we shall imagine this sea of silence within us or we shall feel that we are nothing but a sea of poise itself. — Sri Chinmoy

Fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small "t." Big "T" Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed. — Robert McKee

People were like icebergs. There was so much more than you could see. Everyone had secrets below the surface. — Courtney Sheinmel

The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface. — Howard Zinn

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that. — Nick Clegg

You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It's one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God's name; it's another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace.
With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it's never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because there's always more going on just below the surface. — Rob Bell

There is a mystical quality to the place where sea meets land, the clashing of two very different worlds. Yet continuity remains between them. The oceans reclaim the earth with their wind and water. The earth soaks up the sea to be carried off by the rain. They are always in flux. Each has their specific creatures, breathing in their own given ways, but dying in the same way, caught in a constant battle to survive. They swim and run and fly in tranquil spaces, among rolling hills and waves, great blue and green expanses, mountains both below the surface and above. And there is violence in their worlds. — F.G. Capitanio

A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or fro, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part. There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion. There is no space or interval (time). — Jo Baer

Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television. — Joko Beck

Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth's hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries. — James E. Lovelock

I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker. Sometimes too, in a message which superficially is not very important, I hear a deep human cry that lies buried and unknown far below the surface of the person.
So I have learned to ask myself, can I hear the sounds and sense the shape of this other person's inner world? Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows? — Carl R. Rogers

There is death.
Making his way through all of it.
On the surface: unflappable, unwavering.
Below: unnerved, untied, and undone. — Markus Zusak

We can't see the ocean through the haze, but we can hear its susurrations on the shore below, feel its misty presence on our skin, imagine the way it fills up the horizon and how it, like fog, shrouds the earth's body, reflecting light on the surface but remaining impenetrably dark beneath, down in the deep soul of the world. — Justin Hocking

St. Augustine is not only the oldest continuously-occupied European settlement on the American continent, it is also perhaps the most haunted city in the United States. Seemingly every spot in this city has some ghostly hidden history, right below the surface. Just by strolling through the historic streets you can hear the whispers of the long-dead. — James Caskey

Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it. — Susan Sontag

Marriage was like the surface of an ocean, seemingly placid and serene above; yet if you weren't careful, seething and raging with underground earthquakes below. — Melissa De La Cruz

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone. — John McPhee

Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth; And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error. — Horace Mann

Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive. — Mitch Albom

Was going to drown. Woo had attached him to the drain at the bottom of the pool with his own handcuffs. He looked up. The moon was shining down on him through a filter of water. He stretched his free arm up and out of the water. Hell, the pool was only one meter deep here! Harry crouched and tried to stand up, stretched with all his might. The handcuff cut into his thumb, but still his mouth was twenty centimeters below the surface. He noticed the shadow at the edge of the pool moving away. Shit! Don't panic, he thought. Panic uses up oxygen. He sank to the bottom and examined the grille with his fingers. It was made of steel and was totally immovable, it didn't budge even when he grabbed it with both hands and pulled. How long could he hold his breath? One minute? Two? All his muscles ached, his temples throbbed and red stars were dancing in front of his eyes. He tried to jerk himself loose. His mouth was dry with fear, his brain had started producing — Jo Nesbo

I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change. A powerful change. And I have found that while we are emerging, changing into something glorious; it is actually us becoming who we really are. A water lily is born underneath the water, inside the soil at the bottom of the river or lake. And the water lily has always been a water lily for that whole time that it was sprouting out of the wet soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching and grasping for the surface; where it then buds and blooms on the outside in the sunshine. It doesn't bud and bloom on the surface and then try to reach down below into the soil. — C. JoyBell C.

In a word there seems to be the light of the outer world, of those who know the sun and moon emerge at such an hour and such another plunge again below the surface, and who rely on this, and who know that clouds are always to be expected but sooner or later always pass away, and mine. But mine too has its alterations, I will not deny it, its dusks and dawns, but that is what I say, for I too must have lived, once, out there, and there is no recovering from that. — Samuel Beckett

She was doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they're thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they'd just accuse you of being paranoid. — Cecily Von Ziegesar

This is not the true meaning of jihad," he spoke into the starless dark. "Jihad is the holy war we have within ourselves. That is the meaning below the surface. Our internal struggle for purity," he said with emphasis, pressing his forefinger into his chest. "It is the war of ascendance over our basal instincts. It has absolutely nothing to do with others. The only thing we can have control over is ourselves. — Camilla Gibb

But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country. — James W. Robertson

What would normal people think if they knew what went on in a writer's mind below the surface? They'd think him even more around the bend than they had previously supposed if they could see the witches' cauldron of images and memories boiling up from the subconscious, impressions whirling in from without, ideas and insights bursting up like bubbles and gone again before they can be seized. And the hopelessness of the business, the whole infuriating, exhausting, fascinating business of grabbing something out of the turmoil and imposing upon it some faint shadow or rumor of the order, pattern and rhythm of the world. — Elizabeth Goudge

The life of a man is like a ball in the river, the Buddhist texts state - no matter what our will wants or desires, we are swept along by an invisible current that finally delivers us to the limitless expanse of the black sea. This image rather appeals to me. It suggests there are times when we float lightly along life's surface, bobbing from one languid, long pool to another. But then, when we least expect it, we turn a river bend and find ourselves plummeting over a thundering waterfall into the churning abyss below. This I have experienced. And more. — Richard C. Morais

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture. — Phyllis Theroux

A tree reaches below the surface to gather strength for stargazing. — Dolly Parton

The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids? — Anita Johnston

The craft passed directly below Scathach and she released her grip and dropped onto the top of the vimana alongside Joan with enough force to send the larger craft plunging down. The French immortal laughed. "So nice of you-"
"Don't you dare crack any dropping-in jokes," Scathach warned before her friend could finish.
The vimana dipped and spun, but the two women had firm grips on the transparent dome and held on while the pilot tilted the craft,attempting to shake them off.
"So long as he doesn't get too close to the lava," Scatty said, "we should be okay."
At that moment the vimana dropped straight down, zooming dangerously close to the lava's sluggish bubbling surface.
"I think he heard you," Joan said, coughing as the air became almost unbreathable. — Michael Scott

Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha's mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface. — Terry Pratchett

All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter. — Nina George

He who only sees the obvious, wins his battles with difficulty; he who looks below the surface of things, wins with ease — Sun Tzu

The federalism term is a good term, but it's just below the surface; it's just about to come up into wider public understanding that these practices are happening and are politically viable. — Gar Alperovitz

She was probably too cool, too self-possessed. Some of our classmates must have thought her cold and haughty. But I detected something else- something warm and fragile just below the surface. Something very much like a child playing hide-and-seek, hidden deep within her, yet hoping to be found. — Haruki Murakami

When my dad passed, there's a lot of sadness right below the surface, and I think there will be until the day I die. So, writing sad songs helps it. And when I sing them, it's pure therapy for me. — Ashley Monroe

Guilt is a huge player in the way blacks and whites relate to each other. It's huge and deadly when it is denied. It's huge and deadly when it is wallowed in. It's huge and deadly when it is exploited. There is no deliverance and no relief and no healing in any of those ways of dealing with guilt. Denial drives it below the surface where it creates endless illusions and self-justifications. Wallowing in it produces phony humility and obsequiousness and moral cowardice. Exploiting it gives a false sense of power that turns out to be only the weapon of weakness. If guilt is not dealt with more deeply, there will be no way forward. — John Piper

The earth itself assures us it is a living entity. Deep below surface one can hear its slow pulse, feel its vibrant rhythm. The great breathing mountains expand and contract. The vast sage desert undulates with almost imperceptible tides like the oceans. From the very beginning, throughout all its cataclysmic upthrusts and deep sea submergences, the planet Earth seems to have maintained an ordered rhythm. — Frank Waters

No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. — Emily St. John Mandel

Again and again, I pushed my memories away. There were days when it was easy and days when it was hard. My love ... was a boulder in my heart. I sought to let go of it and let it sink. Let it sink below the surface, carrying my heart with it. Let it come to rest on the stream's bottom, a vast hidden bulwark, dividing the current. Let it stay there, hidden and unseen. Forgotten. Betimes it worked. Betimes it didn't. It was the best I could do. — Jacqueline Carey

There used to be a middle way, too, when her attention was focused but vast, and time felt like a limpid pool, ringed by sunlit ferns. An underground spring fed the pool from deep below, creating a gentle current of words that bubbled up, while on the surface, breezes shimmered and played. — Ruth Ozeki

see past the surface to the tides below. — Grace Draven

An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below. — James Hogg

All over East Africa-indeed, all over Africa-it is normal for people to walk a kilometer or two or six for water. In more arid areas, people walk even greater distances, and sometimes all they find at the end is a pond slimy with overuse. More than 90 percent of Africans still dig for their water, and waterborne diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, bilharzia, and cholera are common. The bodies of many Africans are a stew of parasites. In some areas the wells are so far below the earth's surface that chains of people are required to pass up the water. — Marq De Villiers

Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface. — James Bryant Conant

Now smiling had been something almost alien to me just a few weeks ago. But over this short period of time, I had rediscovered this art thanks to that noble emotion of love. Joy that had been bottled up inside since childhood now overcame me from deep within just like the healing water reaching folks at hot springs from regions deep below the surface. — Vivek Pereira

For me, the best thing about Cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just imagine the whole thing is two miles below the moon's surface, and that half the people's right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it's interesting again. — Rudy Rucker

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions, decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below. — Eric Johnston

Am I the only one who secretly hopes that the Curiosity rover will be swallowed up by a giant alien worm living just below Mars's surface? — Victoria Laurie

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. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Summer lightning made it seem that flickering white-hot wires were turning in the terribly blue sky just above the horizon, and the recent storms had driven in toward shore hundreds of gigantic Portuguese man-o'-wars that now hung below the surface of the water like big malignant pearls. — Tim Powers

Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal. — Rachel Carson

You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else. — Haruki Murakami

Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are. — Sarah Dessen

In an ideal world, he'd simply scrape the surface of his bottomless courage, carelessly slip off his horse, scratch his massive balls, and then stroll over to the Lair in his own good time. But this wasn't an ideal world, Rawley's courage reservoir was barely a puddle, and at that particular moment he had precious little below the belt worth scratching! — Aaron D'Este

But very quickly I discovered that passing didn't just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive. I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside. — Leslie Feinberg

I can't say what my first thought was as I sunk below the surface, because it was mostly a string of four-letter words. — Rachel Hawkins

Each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering pathway, a golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline - as if the sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to follow. — Lawrence Beesley

Sometimes the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary down there, but that all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor. — Khaled Hosseini

All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us. — Shirley Jackson

We can choice to cower at the river's edge, watching as life sails past us, always the bystander, never the participant. We can shade our eyes and fret about all the untold dangers below the surface. We can play and replay all the warnings we've ever heard.
Or.
Or we can equip ourselves with what we need to survive — Justina Chen

I marveled about our collective ability as women to keep all the pain hidden, just below the surface. — Kaira Rouda

I wanted to press the bruise once more to see how much pain was still pooled below the surface. I don't mean I wanted it in the sense of desire. Rather, I intended to do it through the force of primal habit. — Charlotte Shane

Let those find fault whose wit's so very small, They've need to show that they can think at all; Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below. Fops may have leave to level all they can; As pigmies would be glad to lop a man. Half-wits are fleas; so little and so light, We scarce could know they live, but that they bite. — John Dryden

I inspect everything more closely, and there is about every surface - the river, the forest, the bark of the trees, the underbrush between them, even my own skin - there is about it all the unmistakable texture of linen stretched and framed. And this is when I feel the camel's hair brush and the oil paint dabbing tenderly, meticulously, at the space below my navel. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

She felt happy these days, yet there was always an undercurrent of sadness just below the surface — Diane Chamberlain

Many fires burn below the surface. — Empedocles

Of all the paradoxes of Lincoln's life, none is more powerful than the fact that the man who would come to be known throughout the world - from American schoolrooms to the tribal councils of the Caucasus Mountains - was deeply mysterious to the people who knew him best. "Those who have spoken most confidently of their knowledge of his personal qualities," wrote the Pennsylvania Republican Alexander McClure, "are, as a rule, those who saw least of them below the surface. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Ash!" I called. "What are you doing? Come on!"
"Meghan." Ash's voice despite the pain below the surface, was calm. "I hope you find your brother. If you see Puck again tell him I regret having to step out of our duel."
"Ash, no! Don't do this!"
I felt him smile. "You made me feel alive again," he murmured.
Screeching, the greemlins attacked. — Julie Kagawa

Imagine fish swimming in a shallow pond, just below the lily pads, thinking that their "universe" is only two-dimensional. Our three-dimensional world may be beyond their ken. But there is a way in which they can detect the presence of the third dimension. If it rains, they can clearly see the shadows of ripples traveling along the surface of the pond. Similarly, we cannot see the fifth dimension, but ripples in the fifth dimension appear to us as light. — Michio Kaku

You have to get inside the people you are writing about. You have to go below the surface. And that's to a very large degree what all writers are doing - they're trying to get below the surface. Whether it's in fiction or poetry or writing history and biography. Some people make that possible because they write wonderful letters and diaries. And you have to sort of go where the material is. — David McCullough

This is the yin and yang of the earth, an energetic feedback. What happens below relates directly to what is happening on the surface and in the atmosphere and vice versa. Tectonics does not end at the ground beneath your feet. It is a dynamic system from the earth's interior all the way into the sky and back. — Craig Childs

He speaks on, words washing over me, the way that sunlight skips over the surface of water and filters into the depths below, lighting up the darkness. I keep my eyes closed. Amazingly, I can still see the stars: whole galaxies blooming from nothing - pink and purple suns, vast silver oceans, a thousand white moons. — Lauren Oliver

Computers and computing are all around us. Some computing is highly visible, like your laptop. But this is only part of a computing iceberg. A lot more lies hidden below the surface. We don't see and usually don't think about the computers inside appliances, cars, airplanes, cameras, smartphones, GPS navigators and games. — Brian Kernighan

A Permeable Life is about what presses out from the heart, what comes in at a slant and what shimmers below the surface of things. To live permeably is to be open-hearted and audacious, to risk showing up as our truest self, and embracing a willingness to be astonished. — Carrie Newcomer

Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. — Brene Brown

In a taxi speeding uptown on the West Side Highway, I let my thoughts drift below the surface of the Hudson until it finally occurs to me that feelings fill the gaps created by the indirectness of experience. Though the experience is social, thoughts carry it into a singular space and it is this that causes the feelings of loneliness; or it is this that collides the feeling with the experience so that what is left is the solitude called loneliness. — Claudia Rankine

With these surface waters, through a series of delicately adjusted, interlocking relationship, the life of all parts of the sea is linked. What happens to a diatom in the upper, sunlit strata of the sea may well determine what happens to a cod lying on a ledge of some rocky canyon a hundred fathoms below, or to a bed of multicolored, gorgeously plumed seaworms carpeting an underlying shoal. or to a prawn creeping over the soft oozes of the sea floor in the balckness of mile-deep water. — Rachel Carson

Professor Winthrop delivered an influential lecture at Harvard proposing the earthquake might have been caused by heat and pressure below the surface of the earth. With God's help, of course, but God comes off as an engineer instead of a hothead vigilante.) — Sarah Vowell

As young people, she says, we want something to slow us down and keep us trapped in one place long enough to look below the surface of the world. — Chuck Palahniuk

How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father had said, that men were given to know just a little of what paradise was like, so that they might yearn for it with all their soul,and strive during their time on earth to be worthy of going there. — Paul Bowles

It is well known, that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it ... But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain that such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings. — Thomas Jefferson

She had once been described, by one who saw below the surface, as a perfectly beautiful woman in an absolutely plain shell. — Florence L. Barclay

Yet though there is no visible barrier I know only too well that I am surrounded by unseen and impassable walls which tower into the highest domes of the zenith and sink many miles below the surface of the earth. — Anna Kavan

The traveler took a long pull and stepped confidently onto the water, only to sink and flounder desperately before he regained the shore.
"Hey," he shouted at the wizards, "why didn't that wine work for me?"
"The wine's fine," a wizard called back. "But if you'd told us you wanted to cross, we'd have told you where the rocks just below the surface were. — Jack Maguire

The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears. — Jules Verne

Her emotions were so raw that the hated tears were always just below the surface, waiting to escape at the most inopportune times. She felt like an emotional wreck and had to constantly battle for composure. — Laurann Dohner

Many times when I stop working on a problem consciously, my mind continues to work on it below the surface. Often solutions come on me quite by surprise. I've learned over time to allow that to happen, rather than to feel that I can simply solve the problem by continuous, grueling effort. — Marilynne Robinson

The master sees beyond what is obvious. He sees the unseen, feels the unfelt, and hears the unheard. He looks below the surface for what is hidden and so finds the great heartbeat of the Universe. He smiles, knowing it is his heartbeat, your heartbeat, our heartbeat. — Wu Wei

Was it because a lot of the heat went into melting Arctic sea ice or parts of Greenland and Antarctica, and other glaciers? Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface? ... Perhaps all of these things are going on? — Kevin E. Trenberth

All penguins are the same below the surface, which I think is as perfect an analogy as we're likely to get for the futility of racism. — Russell Brand

I've never wanted to kiss anyone more than I have wanted to kiss you in my entire existence. And it isn't just because I can't kiss you. It's because you're beautiful. You're a survivor and you wear your scars unashamed. There's a confidence about you that has never had the opportunity to come out, but I can see it lying below the surface. One day, I hope that you'll be able to drop your walls that restrict you from happiness and live free. I would love to see it, but even if I don't, I'll be happy just knowing it will happen. — K. Webster

Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface of the sea there may be a multitude of waves but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence- that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. When we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation. — Sri Chinmoy