Duck In Water Quotes & Sayings

Platitudes and generalities roll of the human understanding like water from a duck — Claude C. Hopkins

This is no laughing matter, the man is also a close relation to the Emperor."

"How close?"

"I believe they are already drawing lots to see who gets to dangle your intestines from the city flag pole," Cosimo glared at Matteus, but even the threat of draw and quartering rolled off his massive back like a duck in water. — Sabrina Zbasnik

Like a duck on the pond. On the surface everything looks calm, but beneath the water those little feet are churning a mile a minute. — Gene Hackman

He was convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in society. He — Leo Tolstoy

For me to go to America - which I find such a positive place - well, I took to it like a duck to water. — Victoria Beckham

Aren't you going a little overboard?" I asked, picturing a day ahead of me trying to find these items in a town I didn't know.
"Nonsense, darling. What's the point of a party if you don't go overboard."
I sat on the sofa watching her, admiring her. Not only was she beautiful, but she had a wonderful way of shaking off life's little problems, like water off a duck's back. Nothing seemed to upset her. — Rhys Bowen

One personal tip that my trainer gave me was, "Don't take things personally. People are calling on the worst days of their lives and you're their first point of contact. Be like a duck and let the water roll off your back." I live by those words when I'm at work. — Cameron West

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago. — David Knopfler

Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105 — Monica Ali

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph. — Berenice Abbott

I always thought of him in terms of a duck, you know? Lancelot Satterwhite is to adoration as a duck is to water. He only wanted to be swimming around in a great pool of it, but it never soaked in to touch him, just always rolled off." "Sounds — Lauren Groff

A confident leader is like a duck. Above the water, he is calm and poised while below the water, he is driven by a flurry of focused activity. — Todd Stocker

I still can't talk about it," he said
"Duck." Dirk touched his cheek
"I remember, later, my mom trying to run into the water and I'm trying to hold her back and her hair and my tears are so bright that I'm blind. I knew she would have walked right into the ocean after him and kept going. In a way I wanted to go too. — Francesca Lia Block

He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn't the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot way, and was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story. — Ali Smith

I found my mind has changed over the last years. Different vulnerabilities - things that I was never vulnerable to before I am now. And vice-versa. Things I was vulnerable to then are like water off a duck's back. I have a lot less fear. I think I'm getting more determined. — Paolo Nutini

Raucous quacking sounded in Firestar's ear. He jumped up, staring around wildly until he spotted a duck in the water beside the reed bed. — Erin Hunter

My motto is water off a duck's back. Meaning: don't let negativity weigh you down, perpetuate positive thinking. — Jinkx Monsoon

I'd pretend their words were water and let them roll off my back. Now, I'm nobody's duck, and their words stung a whole lot more than water. — Nikki Grimes

I'm like a duck: calm above the water, and paddling like hell underneath. — Fred Shero

Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself ... You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens ... By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you. — Ann Patchett

If you keep your feathers well oiled the water of criticism will run off as from a duck's back. — Ellen Swallow Richards

Has your work become very easy? Do you find you can do it with little effort? Has it ceased to impose any strain or fatigue upon you? Do you no longer feel loss of vitality after a long spell of it? Can you now do it as easy as water rolls off a duck's back? If so, look out! Do some stock-taking. Examine your output ... Work done with little effort is likely to yield little result. Every job can be done excellently or indifferently. Excellence necessitates effort-hard, sustained, concentrated effort. — B.C. Forbes

If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct or were unknown, who would have ventured to have surmised that birds might have existed which used their wings solely as flappers, like the logger-headed duck (Micropterus of Eyton); as fins in the water and front legs on the land, like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the Apteryx. Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are possible. — Charles Darwin

[On William Lyon Phelps's Happiness:] It is second only to a rubber duck as the ideal bathtub companion. It may be held in the hand without causing muscular fatigue ... and it may be read through before the water has cooled. And if it slips down the drain pipe, all right, it slips down the drain pipe. — Dorothy Parker

A duck's nest was found today near the trail on the dry open prairie with as far as could be seen no water or marsh near. The bird flew off but could not tell what species. The eggs nine originally. — George Mercer Dawson

What life compares with a duck's life? At home on land, in the air and on water. — Marty Rubin

Gerard Manley Hopkins somewhere describes how he mesmerized a duck by drawing a line of chalk out in front of it. Think of me as the duck; the chalk, softly wearing itself away against the tiny pebbles embedded in the corporate concrete, is Joyce's forward-luring rough-smooth voice on the cassettes she gives me. Or, to substitute another image, since one is hardly sufficient in Joyce's case, when I let myself really enter her tape, when I let it surround me, it is as if I'm sunk into the pond of what she is saying, as if I'm some kind of patient, cruising amphibian, drifting in black water, entirely submerged except for my eyes, which blink every so often. Each word comes floating up to me like a thick, healthy lily pad and brushes past my head. — Nicholson Baker

That's my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck's back. If it's not positive, I didn't hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy. — George Foreman

Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face. — Manoj Arora

Contrary to popular belief, the Loch Ness Monster is not a dinosaur
it's a huge mutant duck, a top researcher claims ... Most mainstream Nessie researchers consider Gluber's duck theory to be horse feathers and are trying to blast it out of the water. — Murphy J. Foster Jr.

Feeling a little grumpy, Melvin decided he would no longer take a bath ever again. Therefore, with that in mind, he marched off into the woods. — Cindy Fisk

The discovery of some toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the merry old Bertram. — P.G. Wodehouse

The first time it felt really dangerous, like the sort of thing you had to lock the doors and close the curtains on because if anybody saw you, God would strike you down with a thunderbolt. But I took to it like a duck to water. — Jamie Muir

Not every child takes instantly to books like a duck to water, but I don't believe there are children who hate books. There are just children who haven't yet found the right books for them. — Amanda Craig