Eel Quotes & Sayings

I found myself wishing that Jeeves wasn't always so dashed tactful. I mean, it's all very well to remove yourself like an eel sliding into mud when the employer has a visitor, but there are moments - and it looked to me as if this was going to be one of them -
when the truer tact is to stick round and stand ready to lend a hand in the free-for-all. — P.G. Wodehouse

The shame-based person is nearly always enmeshed in some way with one or more people. While we are in a dysfunctional, shame-based relationship, we may f eel like we are losing our mind, going crazy. When we try to test reality, we are unable to trust our senses, our feelings and our reactions. — Charles L. Whitfield

A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail. — Tobias Smollett

Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. — Alexander Pope

He felt his own fear racing through his body, and it was with trembling hands that he read the Eel's message. — Steven Erikson

It was December, I had never felt so cold, the eel soup lay heavy on my stomach, I was afraid I'd die, I turned aside to vomit, I envied them. — Samuel Beckett

You make a very handsome dead eel, my husband,"
"For a boiled mollusk, you wear black quite well, my wife, — Grace Draven

Griff held his breath while Dante's hand slid against the side of his soft bulge. He tried to remember that they were just two friends joking around on the corner in Brooklyn.( ... ) "Yeah. I coulda ... you don't have to play undersea treasure hunt in my damn pants."
"Gotta watch out for that electric eel." Dante closed his hand over the ring and winked and pulled his fist out. — Damon Suede

If I were to sit on the ocean floor and look toward the sky,
I might see a whale or electric eel or octopus pass by.

And if I decided to jump straight up and reach with open arms,
I might feel the pleasure of ocean flight propel me 'mid their swarms.

But if I were seated upon the shore and looking toward the stars,
I might see a comet or falling star near Mercury or Mars.

Then if I decided to jump straight up and reach with open hands,
I might feel despair when my feet refused to leave the shoreline sand.

And so I return to the ocean depths where swimming creatures fly,
For there I can soar with the whales and fish that daily touch the sky. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be remembered that Brinktown occupies the surface of a volcanic butte, overlooking a trackless jungle of quagmire, thorn, eel-vine skiver tussock. A single road leads from city down to jungle; the prisoner is merely locked out of the city. Escape is at his option; he may flee as far through the jungle as he sees fit: the entire continent is at his disposal. But no prisoner ever ventures far from the gate; and, when his presence is required, it is only necessary to unlock the gate and call his name. — Jack Vance

Yam raised an army of sea creatures designed to march on Mount Aqraa, to destroy Baal. He created some of the craziest monstrosities every seen: lobsters rode four-legged tuna like proud cavalry, sword fish infantry marched onward in perfect step, biped whales thundered towards the mountain, while winged sharks provided air support. An elite group of electric eel assassins were armed with both their innate ability to shock in melee combat and throwing star fish for long range skirmishes. — Dylan Callens

They bear down upon Westminster, the ghost-consecrated Abbey, and the history-crammed Hall, through the arches of the bridge with a rush as the tide swelters round them; the city is buried in a dusky gloom save where the lights begin to gleam and trail with lurid reflections past black velvety- looking hulls - a dusky city of golden gleams. St. Paul's looms up like an immense bowl reversed, squat, un-English, and undignified in spite of its great size; they dart within the sombre shadows of the Bridge of Sighs, and pass the Tower of London, with the rising moon making the sky behind it luminous, and the crowd of shipping in front appear like a dense forest of withered pines, and then mooring their boat at the steps beyond, with a shuddering farewell look at the eel-like shadows and the glittering lights of that writhing river, with its burthen seen and invisible, they plunge into the purlieus of Wapping.
("The Phantom Model") — Hume Nisbet

I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish. — Edith Sitwell

My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bag full of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes. What are the chances you will pull out the eel? — Hilary Mantel

I have the backbone of an eel. — Betty White

The truth was loose: I was the son of a son of a bitch, an ancestral prodigy born to clobber my way through loathsome dungheaps of idiot labor. My genes were cocked and loaded. I was a meteor, a gunslinger, a switchblade boomerang hurled from the pecker dribblets of my forefathers' untainted jalopy seed. I was Al Kaline peggin' home a beebee from the right field corner. I was Picasso applyin' the final masterstroke to his frenzied Guernica. I was Wilson Pickett stompin' up the stairway of the Midnight Hour. I was one blazin' tomahawk of m-fuggin' eel snot. Graceful and indomitable. Methodical and brain-dead. The quintessential shoprat. The Rivethead. — Ben Hamper

Take every gain without showing remorse about missed profits, because an eel may escape sooner than you think. — James De La Vega

MECH to Baal: Would you like some wine, Mr Baal? All take seats, Baal in the place of honour. Do you like crab? That's a dead eel. PILLER to Mech: I'm very glad that the immortal poems of Mr Baal, which I had the honour of reading to you, have earned your approval. To Baal: You must publish your poetry. Mr Mech pays like a real patron of the arts. You'll be able to leave your attic. MECH: I buy cinnamon wood. Whole forests of cinnamon float down the rivers of Brazil for my benefit. But I'll also publish your poetry. EMILIE: You live in an attic? BAAL eating and drinking: 64 Klauckestrasse. MECH: I'm really too fat for poetry. But you've got the same-shaped head as a man in the Malayan Archipelago, who used to have himself driven to work with a whip. If he wasn't grinding — Bertolt Brecht

Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie. — C.S. Lewis

Talking to you is like
like talking to an eel!"
"No, is it? I've never tried to talk to an eel. Isn't it as waste of time?"
"Not such a waste of time as talking to you! — Georgette Heyer

Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides. — Connie Willis

Quiet as a shadow
Light as a feather
Quick as a snake
Calm as still water
Smooth as summer silk
Swift as a deer
Slippery as an eel
Strong as a bear
Fierce as a wolverine
Still as stone — George R R Martin

The eel's pause gave Kim far too long to weigh how incredibly stupid this impulse was
as if the tattoo covering his wrist weren't reminder enough of how irrevocable some rash ideas could be. — K.A. Mitchell

You trip and lance
Your finger at a crab. It strikes. You rub
It inch-meal to a bilge of shell. You dance
Child-crazy over tub and gunnel, grasping
Your pitchfork like a trident, poised to stab
The greasy eel-grass clasping and unclasping
The jellied iridescence of the crab. — Robert Lowell

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Schopenhauer writes about marriage. He says getting married is like grasping blind into a sack of snakes and hoping to find an eel. — Laura Moriarty

As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip," he bit out, "we've already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices. — Naomi Novik

Besides, Reyna will do what she can to slow things down. She's still on our side. I know she is."
"You trust her." Piper's voice sounded hollow, even to herself.
"Look Pipes. I told you, you've got nothing to be jealous about."
"She's beautiful. She's powerful. Se's so ... Roman."
Jason put down his hammer. He took her hand, which sent a tingle up her arm. Piper's dad had once taken her to the Aquarium of the Pacific and shown her an electric eel. He told her that the eel sent out pulses that shocked and paralyzed its prey. Each time Jason looked at her or touched her hand, Piper felt like that.
"You're beautiful and powerful," he said. "And I don't want you to be Roman. I want you to be Piper. Besides, we're a team, you and me. — Rick Riordan

Just because I have made a point of never losing my accent it doesn't mean I'm an eel-and-pie yob. — Michael Caine

Be an electric eel in a goldfish pond! — S.A.R.K.

There's something to be said about practice-even if I'm not actually practicing anything. Just hanging out in the water, holding my breath, withering my skin to grandma-like wrinkles.
I pull off the flippers Toraf brought me and chuck them onto shore. I keep my back turned while he maneuvers his shorts into place. "Are you decent?" I call after a few seconds. No matter how many times I tell him I can't see into the water yet, he insists I'm just trying to look at his "eel." For crying out loud.
"Oh, I'm more than decent. I'm actually quite a catch."
I couldn't agree more. Toraf is good-looking, funny, and considerate-which makes me question Rayna's attitude. — Anna Banks

My God, what's happened?" He crossed to her at once and knelt at her side. "What is it? Tell me."
"It's ruined," she cried.
"What's ruined?"
"Everything. Your meal. My life. Our chances." She hiccupped. "The eel. — Tessa Dare

It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped. — Graham Joyce

What curious attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger-and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy. — Lewis Carroll

You may call an eletric eel a rubber duck but that does not make it a rubber duck and god help the poor bastard who takes a bath with the duckie — Cassandra Clare

Here's the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live ... when they find a cave they like, the wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that ... well, to be sure it's a nice cave, I suppose. And when they've made up their minds that it's comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory ... by spitting. — Arthur Golden

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There's plenty of food here," Erik said dismissively. "We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale. — Bernard Cornwell

Jun Do was thinking about all the popular definitions of love, that it was a pair of bare hands clasping an ember to keep it alive, that it was a pearl that shines forever, even in the belly of the eel that eats the oyster, that love was a bear that feeds you honey from its claws. — Adam Johnson

In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abcess. — Dave Barry

I keep my back turned while he maneuvers his shorts into place. "Are you decent?" I call after a few seconds. No matter how many times I tell him I can't see into the water yet, he insists I'm just trying to look at his "eel." For crying out loud. — Anna Banks

KATH PHARAOH'S WAY WITH EEL'S

The young ones are the best, before the turn yellow. Put them in a pillowcase with a handful of salt and swish that around in a tub of water till the sliminess is gone. Fry them in bacon fat. They're soon done. If you can't get elvers, then get an old boy, eight or nine years old. After you've skinned him, cut him into two-inch pieces and bake him on a grid. That needs a good hot flame. Nice with piccalilli. — Laurie Graham

Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. (Jace Wayland) — Cassandra Clare

Diana opened her eyes and steeled her resolve. Some days, she decided, freedom meant the wind in your hair and the sun on your face and lips swollen with forbidden kisses.
And other days, freedom meant killing an eel. — Tessa Dare

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. — Ambrose Bierce

We watch the chef slice eel and octopus, delicate operations of dismemberment and amputation. For some reason it makes me think of poetry. — Jessica Martinez

I have a name," I grumped, my stomach pinching me harder.
"Yes, but it has no pizzazz. Ra-a-a-a-chel. Rach-e-e-e-eel," he said, trying it out in different ways. "No one will tremble in terror at that. Oh my God!" he said in a high falsetto. "It's Rachel! Run! Hide! — Kim Harrison

Love is a slippery eel that bites like hell — Bertrand Russell

Finally the homeless eel marked its territory, I suppose, and the Doctor lay heavily upon me, moist with sweat. — Arthur Golden

The impetuous creature
a pirate
started forward, sprang away; she had to hold the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous, bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall. — Virginia Woolf

The funny thing about mundies," Jace said, to nobody in particular, "is how obsessed with magic they are for a bunch of people who don't even know what the word means."
I know what it means," Clary snapped.
No, you don't, you just think you do. Magic is a dark elemental force, not just a lot of sparkly wands and crystal balls and talking goldfish."
I never said it was a lot of talking goldfish, you-"
Jace waved a hand, cutting her off. "Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. — Cassandra Clare

How index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail! — Alexander Pope

Getting married is like putting one's hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel. — Thomas More

Metaphor is a slippery eel, if it wasn't for its shock I'd stick to the easy catch of prose. — David Joseph Cribbin

And, in her fury, she slapped the king with a skinned eel. — Bernard Cornwell

I had eel at a sushi bar once; it's disgusting. I thought it was chicken. It looked like chicken. It was brown and looked delicious, and I was like, 'That looks safe.' It wasn't. — Chris Evans

and the moon passes over the sun and nothing changes and nothing is learned because you have lost your bucket and shovel and no longer care. What if you regain the surface and open your sack and find, instead of treasure, a beast which jumps at you? Or you may not come back at all. The winches may jam, the scaffolding buckle, the air conditioning collapse. You may glance up one day and see by your headlamp the canary keeled over in its cage. You may reach into a cranny for pearls and touch a moray eel. You yank on your rope; it is too late. — Annie Dillard

Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent - a beef-eater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you. — Charlotte Bronte

Look- what I'm getting at is no matter who or what you're dealing with, people build up meaning between themselves and the things around them. The important thing is whether this comes about naturally or not. Being bright has nothing to do with it. What matters is that you see things with your own eyes... There's always going to be a connection between you, Mr. Nakata, and the things you deal with. Just like there's a connection between eel and rice bowls. And as the web of these connections spreads out, a relationship between you, Mr. Nakata, and capitalists and the proletariat naturally develops.
~page 189 — Haruki Murakami

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth - so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small 'Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, 'I'm hungry.' And the small 'Stute Fish said in a small 'stute voice, 'Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man? — Rudyard Kipling

In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not. This was because of her worries as to whether to purchase a small property, the Old House, with its own warehouse on the foreshore, and to open the only bookshop in Hardborough. The uncertainty probably kept her awake. She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much. Florence felt that if she hadn't slept at all - and people often say this when they mean nothing of the kind - she must have been kept awake by thinking of the heron. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains. — Alexander Pope

I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish. — Edith Sitwell

The funniest thing about comedy is that you never know why people laugh. I know what makes them laugh but trying to get your hands on the why of it is like trying to pick an eel out of a tub of water. — W.C. Fields

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality. — William Shenstone

[W]hat have we done with our forests? Chopped them, and burned them, and wasted them; and now almost the last of the great stands of timber are here on the Pacific slope. We are in the center of the best of them. Probably nowhere on earth does there exist a forest to compare in continuous grandeur and unqualified beauty with the Redwoods that are found along the Eel River and to the north. — Madison Grant