Duck Paddling Quotes & Sayings

And, impossible though it may be, we will have to resist partisanship. The only way back to a free society, to a country where no one need fear the president's wrath or impulses, is to unwind the factionalism that has helped destroy this country. We have to forge a new coalition on right and left to resist fascism's reach and cultic power. In a country which just elected and re-elected a black president - whose grace feels now almost painful to recall - it is surely possible. — Andrew Sullivan

A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist. — Harold Rosenberg

Anarchism is in reality the ideal of political and social science, and also the ideal of religion. It is the ideal to which Jesus Christ looked forward. Christ founded no church, established no state, gave practically no laws, organized no government and set up no external authority, but he did seek to write on the hearts of men God's law and make them self-legislating. — R. Heber Newton

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck
paddling, paddling, paddling. — Scott Stossel

The secret of success is to be like a duck, Smooth and unruffled on top, But paddling furiously underneath. — Bill Cosby

Let love be your perfect weapon. — Andy Biersack

And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and duck's bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing, some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars, donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their maws, all chewed up except for their helpless paddling feet; limestone or leaden, metalled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving from buttresses, walls and roofs. — Hilary Mantel

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.
For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog. — Charles M. Schulz

From Woody's Restaurant, Middlebury"


Today, noon, a young macho friendly waiter and three diners,
business types - two males, one female -
are in a quandary about the name of the duck paddling
Otter Creek,
the duck being brown, but too large to be a female mallard.
They really want to know, and I'm the human-watcher behind the nook
of my table,
camouflaged by my stillness and nonchalant plumage.
They really want to know.
This sighting I record in the back of my Field Guide to People. — Greg Delanty

Every soldier had to battle his weaker self. His weaker self had brought Donnersmarck to his knees, trembling. He had screamed it away, he had outrun it, he had drowned it in the blood of others. And he had always defeated it. — Cornelia Funke

At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild. — Wendell Berry

I like to sing and it's just really fun to sing, and I don't get too much. And at my house I'm not allowed to because, you know, your children can't stand it when you sing at home. — Garrison Keillor

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

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath. — Michael Caine

How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different peoples names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capital building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world? — John Allen Paulos

Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on the air. I'm seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That's because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope and gladness, doesn't it? When the east wind blows I always think of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east." "And — L.M. Montgomery

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

As an actor, what's interesting is what's hidden away beneath the surface. You want to be like a duck on a pond - very calm on the surface but paddling away like crazy underneath. — Alexander Skarsgard

In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond. — Warren Buffett

I can't go back and change the hands of time but what I can do is create a new legacy. — Eric Thomas