Fish Pond Quotes & Sayings

When I was a kid, I felt like I could do anything and play anything. I just felt super-confident. And then, once I started to play music professionally, maybe it's from being from a small town, but you grow up and then you're suddenly a big fish in a small pond, and I realized that there were a billion other drummers out there that could play as good as you or better, and everybody wants that job. — Patty Schemel

Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it. — Alexander Herzen

And why do so many people wilfully exhaust their strength in promiscuous living, when their wives are on hand from bridal night till old age - to be taken when required, like fish from a private pond. — Ihara Saikaku

My teen-beat afternoon clarified everything for me. I had to get back to where I was who I was, a son of New Jersey, gunslinger, bar band king, small-town local hero, big fish in a little pond and breadwinner. Right — Bruce Springsteen

Fishes are born in water Man is born in Tao. If fishes, born in water, Seek the deep shadow Of pond and pool, All their needs Are satisfied. If man, born in Tao, Sinks into the deep shadow Of non-action To forget aggression and concern, He lacks nothing His life is secure. Moral: All the fish needs Is to get lost in water. All man needs is to get lost In Tao. — Thomas Merton

I think in both of those situations, it's important as an actor to learn, despite the success I had as a kid, that it's important to understand what it means to be a small fish in a big pond. — Anthony Michael Hall

But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was still a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a lot of mistakes, a fact Tess compulsively shared on first dates, but she gave them credit for doing one thing right: Starting when she was eight, they gave her a library card and dropped her off at the downtown Pratt every Saturday while they shopped. Twenty-one years later, Tess still entered through the children's entrance on the side, pausing to toss a penny in the algae-coated fish pond, then climbing the stairs to the main hall. If she could be married here, she would. — Laura Lippman

119. Let your hook be always cast in the pond. when you least expect it, there will be fish. — Ovid

Some fish get caught for biting and some fish just get caught for being in the wrong part of the pond ... I'm no diviner, but having been in the wrong part of the pond most of my life, I can usually tell which fish bite and which fish don't. I suspect you may have found yourself in the wrong part of the pond a time or two. — Clare Vanderpool

There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero. — Henry Fielding

I also enjoy canoeing, and I suppose you will smile when I say that I especially like it on moonlight nights. I cannot, it is true, see the moon climb up the sky behind the pines and steal softly across the heavens, making a shining path for us to follow; but I know she is there, and as I lie back among the pillows and put my hand in the water, I fancy that I feel the shimmer of her garments as she passes. Sometimes a daring little fish slips between my fingers, and often a pond-lily presses shyly against my hand. Frequently, as we emerge from the shelter of a cove or inlet, I am suddenly conscious of the spaciousness of the air about me. A luminous warmth seems to enfold me. Whether it comes from the trees which have been heated by the sun, or from the water, I can never discover. I have had the same strange sensation even in the heart of the city. I have felt it on cold, stormy days and at night. It is like the kiss of warm lips on my face. — Helen Keller

Empty the pond to get the fish. — Robert Bresson

Death is a fisherman, the world we see His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be; His net some general sickness; howe'er he Is not so kind as other fishers be; For if they take one of the smaller fry, They throw him in again, he shall not die: But death is sure to kill all he can get, And all is fish with him that comes to net. — Benjamin Franklin

A pond with one fish is better than an ocean with none. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond." "On it," muttered Isabel. "What?" "On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it." Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedantic, and — Alexander McCall Smith

I understand that you're a big fish in a small pond, but I'll explain that if you want to swim in the ocean, you must understand that the ocean is populated by sharks, and sharks never sleep. — Kristen Ashley

A Christian who has a hard time living by his or her faith while driving, for instance, could hang a symbol - a cross or a fish - on their rearview mirror to challenge them when their temper begins to flare. (That's certainly preferable to putting a Christian bumper sticker on the back of the car for all to see, and then driving like a son of perdition!) A pastor friend of mine uses a pond near his home as a symbol. As soon as he drives by that pond, he is reminded that he is going home and needs to prepare himself to focus on his wife and children, leaving the cares, worries, and concerns of the church on the north side of the pond. He can pick them back up the next morning when he passes the pond on his way to work. A symbol can be found to meet virtually every need in every situation. Men — Gary L. Thomas

Some people like being a big fish in a small pond, others a ferocious shark in the ocean, I rather be the ocean. In the end, fish die. — Behdad Sami

He belonged to the old school of country gentlemen, ruling his estate with semi-benevolent tyranny and turning his back on all symptoms of social innovation. Under his domination the Packlestone country had been looked after on feudal system lines. His method of dealing with epistolary complaints from discontented farmers was to ignore them; in verbal intercourse he bulled them and sent them about their business with a good round oath. Such people, he firmly believed, were put there by Providence to touch their hats and do as they were told by their betters ... And as such he continued beyond his eightieth year, until he fell into a fish-pond on his estate and was buried by the parson whose existence he had spurned by his arrogance. — Siegfried Sassoon

I prefer being a small fish in a big pond. — Stacy Keibler

Fish in another man's pond and you will catch crabs. — Habeeb Akande

The Korean word for tree rose in his mind, surprising him, like a fish breaking the surface of a calm pond. — Sun Yung Shin

I like to sit on the front porch of an old cabin I built in the woods and just listen to the birds; I like to fish in the pond and I always throw the fish back. — Johnny Cash

We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it. — Shane Claiborne

Fish that boast in a pond should not boast in the ocean. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Why fish in the pond when you live right next to the sea? — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

I kind of killed it in college. You know that saying "big fish in a small pond"? At Dartmouth college, I was freakin' Jaws in a community swimming pool — Mindy Kaling

He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a fish in a pond. It's drying up. You have to mutate into an amphibian, but someone keeps hanging on to you and telling you to stay in the pond, everything's going to be all right. — Jack Kerouac

The orange of the golden carp appeared at the edge of the pond ... We watched in silence at the beauty and grandeur of the great fish. Out of the corners of my eyes I saw Cico hold his hand to his breast as the golden carp glided by. Then with a switch of his powerful tail the golden carp disappeared into the shadowy water under the thicket. — Rudolfo Anaya

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best - less trouble). — Zadie Smith

Imagine you're a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you'd have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you're a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of. — Blake Crouch

Murder was apparently too common-place in the big city to attract much notice.
Poor Luther, thought Lucy, as she headed back to the hotel. Even in death he was only a big fish in a small pond. — Leslie Meier

That's where the dreams end: with the realization that it doesn't matter where I am, whether I think I'm a woman or a fish or something in-between. I've never really left the pond. I still can't breathe. — Seanan McGuire

I was only then, when I knew I was alone, at least for the moment, that I reached under my gown into the pocket of my dress. As I pulled out my key from the yellow house, which I'd kept on my bureau since the day Nate left, I traced the shape one last time before folding my hand tightly around it.
Behind me, Cora was calling again. My family was waiting. Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. I stepped closer to the edge, keeping my eyes on my reflection as I dropped the key into the water, where it landed with a splash. At first, the fish darted away, but as it began to sink they circled back, gathering around. Together, they followed it down, down until it was gone.<3 — Sarah Dessen

In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well stocked fish pond ... If we don't give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked ... As artists, we must learn to be self nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them - to re-stock the trout pond, so to speak. — Julia Cameron

Not my problem" is not a philosophy. It's a mental illness. Right up there with pessimism. Other people's problems are our problems. If your neighbor is laid off, you may feel as if you've dodged the bullet, but you haven't. The bullet hit you as well. You just don't feel the pain yet. Or as Ruut Veenhoven told me: "The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society." In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake. Lesson — Eric Weiner

I changed your life." She looked down at the peach they shared. "You changed min. I'm glad of it." And back into his eyes. "Every day. I'm glad of it. I'd like a pond, and maybe something to sit on so we could watch the creepy, interesting fish."
"That would suit me very well."
She linked her arms around his neck, laid her cheek on his. Love finds a way, she thought. — J.D. Robb

I like being a big fish in a small pond. I'm not interested in a huge audience because it brings headaches. — Nick Lowe

like the big bed it was enclosed in a permanent canopy of heavy netting. Mosquitoes were the least of the creatures this net was intended to exclude; its absence, at any time, night or day, would have been an invitation for snakes and scorpions to make their way between the sheets. In a hut by the pond a woman was even said to have found a large dead fish in her bed. This was a koimachh, or tree perch, a species known to be able to manipulate its spiny fins in such a way as to drag itself overland for short distances. It had found its way into the bed only to suffocate on the mattress. — Amitav Ghosh

Are you nervous about no longer being a big fish in a small pond? — Lisi Harrison

In England, David and I are big fish in a small pond. But in L.A., we are tiny, tiny, tiny fish in a big pond. — Victoria Beckham

It is like trying to describe the ocean to a fish in a pond. It has no concept of what it is. — Brett Jones

I catch a flash of red-gold beneath the surface of the water, and realize that there are koi in the pond, massive, serene, and I wonder: are they dreams of fish, or fish who dream? — Sarah Monette

Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands.
There is little shelter.
Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.
Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. — Sylvia Plath

You're smart then . . . aren't you, Finn?" I heard the awe in my own voice. It wasn't a question. I had never been school smart, and marveled at those who were. "I thought you were. I was never any good with numbers. Math has always been like a murky pond, and me, a hillbilly stabbing at the fish with a pokey stick, trying to get lucky."
"That doesn't make any sense, Bonnie." Finn laughed softly.
"That's my point, Clyde — Amy Harmon

I'd rather be a big fish in a specialized pond than a little, little fish in a more generalized big pond. — Leonard Lauder

Lesson number one: "Not my problem" is not a philosophy. It's a mental illness. Right up there with pessimism. Other people's problems are our problems. If your neighbor is laid off, you may feel as if you've dodged the bullet, but you haven't. The bullet hit you as well. You just don't feel the pain yet. Or as Ruut Veenhoven told me: "The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society." In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake. — Eric Weiner

Frog in a little pond can be much happier than fish in a vast ocean! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Drifting on the black, rippling surface were fingers. Thumbs. Dozens of them. Hundreds, floating like dead fish in a dynamited pond. I saw part of an ear. The lights went out. — Glen Hirshberg

He would have chucked her back into the pond otherwise. Bad fish, he didn't do them young. He was a fucking deviant, not a monster. — V. Theia

Noon was approaching and the shadows under the sycamores were thin and short. The surface of the blue-tiled fish-pond was glassily still and water splashed monotonously into the fountain's basins. Khaemwaset held his fingers under the glittering flow and found it silky and warm. — Pauline Gedge

I wasn't running toward the theater but running away from the sporting goods store. Of course now that I'm selling spaghetti sauce (with Newman's Own), I begin to understand the romance of business.. the allure of being the biggest fish in the pond and the juice you get from beating out your competitors. — Paul Newman

God would not bring you through a Red Sea and turn around and allow you to perish in a fish pond. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? — Rupert Brooke

and there was a fish pond a large one full of the fattest goldfish you ever saw and they were tame. they came to the surface of the water and took pieces of bread from our hands. — Charles Bukowski

It's Easy To Feel Like A Big Fish, When Your Pond is Just A Puddle! — Latif Mercado

One of the gabelle's most irritating inventions was the sel du devoir, the salt duty. Every person in the Grande Gabelle over the age of eight was required to purchase seven kilograms (15.4 pounds) of salt each year at a fixed high government price. This was far more salt than could possibly be used, unless it was for making salt fish, sausages, hams, and other salt-cured goods. But using the sel du devoir to make salted products was illegal, and, if caught, the perpetrator would be charged with the crime of faux saunage, salt fraud, which carried severe penalties. Many simple acts were grounds for a charge of faux saunage. In the Camargue, shepherds who let their flocks drink the salty pond water could be charged with avoiding the gabelle. — Mark Kurlansky

Wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.
I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. — Amy Tan

You might be a big fish in a little pond,
Doesn't mean you've won
'Coz along may come a bigger one. — Coldplay

As a rough rule of thumb, I would say the smaller the pond, the more belligerent the fish. — Craig Brown

The lesson of the Impressionists is that there are times and places where it is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little Fish in a Big Pond, where the apparent disadvantage of being an outsider in a marginal world turns out not to be a disadvantage at all. — Malcolm Gladwell

There is the inner life of thought which is our world of final reality. The world of memory, emotion, feeling, imagination, intelligence and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time consciously or unconsciously like the heartbeat.
There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it.
And that process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn, and if we don't somehow learn it, then our minds line us like the fish in the pond of a man who can't fish. — Ted Hughes

There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time like the heartbeat. There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish. — Ted Hughes

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