Dipper Quotes & Sayings

I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia's Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul's aspiration toward the Infinite. — John Burroughs

In a bitter night, a mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light
that our betters spoke of. — John Steinbeck

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems. — Kate DiCamillo

[Concerning the Water Ouzel, now called American Dipper:] In a general way his music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools. — John Muir

The Big Dipper wheels on its bowl. In years hence it will have stopped looking like a saucepan and will resemble a sugar scoop as the earth continues to wobble and the dipper's seven stars speed in different directions. — Ann Zwinger

A pinch of praise is worth a pound of scorn. A dash of encouragement is more helpful than a dipper of pessimism. A cup of kindness is better than a cupboard of criticism. — William Arthur Ward

The fan was spinning and as the shadows passed over the white ceiling I let my eyes unfocus until all of it looked like a universe being born or a planet unraveling, some creation or catastrophe depending on which way gravity was going and where you were standing. So instead of Elizabeth Taylor I thought about stars and how little I knew about them, and how if I was an explorer and I had to sail a boat across the ocean without rador or an electronic compass I'd be screwed because the only constellations I knew were the Big Dipper and Little Dipper and I always got them confused. And even though I knew I'd never have to sail that boat I still wished I knew more about stars and other things. And I wished I could remember lying in the back yard as a kid with my hands locked behind my head, looking up at the night sky and dreaming. But I couldn't, because it wasn't something I ever did. It would have been a nice memory though — Paul Neilan

The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar ... Any one of these things I mean, not all together. I have traveled thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of traveling simply as a means of getting a livelihood. — Henry David Thoreau

There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. — Haruki Murakami

A wave of Time hangs motionless on this particular shore.
I notice a tree, arsenical grey in the light, or the slow
Wheel of the stars, the Great Bear glittering colder than snow,
And remember there was something else I was hoping for. — Theodore Roethke

I missed the moonlight, the stars. There were times I forgot that there was an entire universe above the clouds. It was as if a shroud had been pulled around the Earth. Over time, we would forget everything that we had once struggled so hard to observe and learn and prove. We would forget about Jupiter and its churning storms. We would forget about the Big Dipper, about Halley's comet. We would stumble across telescopes in old department stores and never give them a second look, never wonder about the things they once made large. — Jason Gurley

Even if you have nothing in your wallet, nothing can keep you from having a great summer. You can listen to crickets sing you to sleep, trace the Big Dipper, breathe in the stars, run through a sprinkler, host a cartwheel contest in the front yard. — Regina Brett

All right, all right! Party supplies are now off-limits, he said, snatching the party string and confetti from them. Dipper and Mabel couldn't help being in a good mood. They were looking forward — Walt Disney Company

It look like the lord just work for wite folks cause ever sens i wasn nothin but a litle boy i been on my on haulin water to the fiel on that ol water cart wit all them dime bukets an that dipper just hittin an old dorthy just trottin and trottin an me up their hittin her wit that rope ... — Thomas Jefferson

Once he paused near a small stream to watch a dipper bob up and down on a rock. He saw a school of trout lurking in a shady place where a branch hung low on the water. No amount of seeing ever made nature old to him, and he was conscious of every movement and sound. — Louis L'Amour

Above and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent and each of its seven stars gleamed from between the fitful clouds. — Paulette Jiles

A flirt is like a dipper attached to a hydrant; every one is at liberty to drink from it, but no one desires to carry it away. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

Still. No resolution ever. None. Nothing decided, nothing finished. The Dipper wheels back into place. Just one turn. One turn of the wheel and we are different, never the same. Not ever. Not even those stars. Even they, they decay, collapse, coalesce, break apart. Close my eyes. — Peter Heller

The Big Dipper. Cassiopeia. — Lenore Look

As long as they let me just talk to the kids, about stuff like, I don't know, knife usage, field medicine for beginners. How to make the night sky your ally, with the Big Dipper a place to hang your hat, and Orion your friend to guide you home. That's what I would have wanted to hear, back then ... — Terry Pratchett

I think reading a good book makes one modest. When you see the marvelous insight into human nature which a truly great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small
like looking at the Big Dipper on a clear night, or seeing the winter sunrise when you go out to collect the morning eggs. And anything that makes you feel small is mighty good for you. — Christopher Morley

At night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket. It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank. After that I was bigger, older. — William Faulkner

I marveled over the cosmic metaphors in my life. Found that all I needed to see and all I needed to know; all I needed to understand could be found in a constellation shaped like the Big Dipper. — Brandi L. Bates

Stay curious, stay weird, stay kind and don't let anyone ever tell you you aren't smart or brave or worthy enough. — Alex Hirsch

Wayne tried to remember a time before he knew the word for sky. You explained away the mystery of the night, he thought, by naming its parts: darkness, Little Dipper, silver birch. — Kathleen Winter

In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires. — Edith Wharton

Punt returns will kill you quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper. — Darrell Royal

There's little to see, but things leave an impression. It's a matter of time and repetition. As something old wears thin or out, something new wears in. The handle on the pump, the crank on the churn, the dipper floating in the bucket, the latch on the screen, the door on the privy, the fender on the stove, the knees of the pants and the seat of the chair, the handle of the brush and the lid to the pot exist in time but outside taste; they wear in more than they wear out. It can't be helped. It's neither good nor bad. It's the nature of life. — Wright Morris

Life's still stupid but we got free of story out here under the beeches and the Big Dipper. We had enough of it, of things happening one after another and no end in sight. Of reversals and falling in love and tragic flaws, and by God if I see another motif in my business I will shoot it dead. — Catherynne M Valente

EFFERVESCENCE AND EVANESCENCE

We've found this Scott Fitzgerald chap
A chipper charming child;
He's taught us how the flappers flap,
And why the whipper-snappers snap,
What makes the women wild.
But now he should make haste to trap
The ducats in his dipper.
The birds that put him on the map
Will shortly all begin to rap
And flop to something flipper. — Keith Preston

I have often wondered how this circumpolar stars between the Drago and the Lion came to be known as the Great Bear. The ancient Egyptians called them the Unwearied Ones or the Rowers of the Ships of Ra. I prefer the Plough or the Wain or even the Big Dipper. The name of the Septriones, the proud walkers, grips the imagination, but the Great Bear is a plain misnomer. — John Hillaby

We lay side by side on the extension roof, hands behind our heads, elbows just touching. My head was still spinning a little, not unpleasantly, from the dancing and the wine. The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. For a moment I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars and nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right. — Tana French