Fishing And Life Quotes & Sayings

It's a tricky balancing act, finding that point between safety and danger where you can feel both secure and adventurous. I used to read books about fishing by people who had given up jobs and careers to show up every day at a trout stream. What made them do it? They realized, after years of fortifying the walls, of making life safe and secure, that they also needed what was on the other side. — John Zeaman

Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature. — Robert Redford

If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled in front of you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be dull as ditchwater. — Alan Sillitoe

I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Old Peter Grimes made fishing his employ; His wife he cabined with him and his boy, And seemed that life laborious to enjoy. — George Crabbe

It was a life with purpose. And it was also a lot of fun. Fishing is fun. Hiking up mountains is fun. Building a wall out of river rocks dug up from the bottom of a glacial lake is not fun. Not at all. But it does give a work ethic that you can take anywhere in the world. — Leigh Newman

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.
I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that -even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass. His splintered hulll shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.
Shoals of babies vied for life.
I won. — Jeanette Winterson

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything-a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening. But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them, living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. — Earl Nightingale

I've gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water. — William G. Tapply

If you lived next door to me and didn't know what I did, you wouldn't know I was a celebrity. I don't have that lifestyle, nor do I want that lifestyle. I want to know that I can have a separate life with my wife and my kids and just be normal and go camping and fishing and outdoor stuff. — Bill Engvall

My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important.
He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.
Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: If this isn't nice, what is? — Kurt Vonnegut

The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war without much regard for their guilt or innocence. The police are allowed by the courts to conduct fishing expeditions for drugs on the streets and freeways based on nothing more than a hunch...and once inside the system, people are often denied attorneys or meaningful representation and pressured into plea bargains by the threat of unbelievably harsh sentences - sentences for minor drug crimes that are higher than many countries impose on convicted murderers. This is the way the roundup works, and it works this way in virtually every major city in the United States. — Michelle Alexander

No life is so happy and so pleasant as the life of the well-govern'd angler. — Izaak Walton

My broken identity turned me into a manipulator and my romantic life looked like one of those fishing shows on television, a game of catch and release in which I only held the girl long enough to snap a picture. — Donald Miller

I saw him on the cover of Life magazine and heard about the wars he covered bravely and the other feats - the world-class fishing, the big-game hunting in Africa, the drinking enough to embalm a man twice his size.The myth he was creating out of his own life was big enough to take it for a time - but under this, I knew he was still lonely. — Paula McLain

I am firmly convinced that the ideal combination leading to a happy life is to have the time to both fish and read. — Brian Murphy

The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. — Ted Danson

But in the dark now and no glow showing and no lights and only the wind and the steady pull of the sail he felt that perhaps he was already dead. He put his two hands together and felt the palms. They were not dead and he could bring the pain of life by simply opening and closing them. He leaned his back against the stern and knew he was not dead. His shoulders told him. — Ernest Hemingway,

Many years ago, I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realized, 'I am killing him?all for the passing pleasure it brings me.' And something inside me clicked. I realized as I watched him fight for breath, that his life was as important to him as mine is to me. — Paul McCartney

Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles! — Robert Bolt

I'm homeless, and I'm an alcoholic. But I have a dream.'
'What's that?'
'I wanna go fishing. — Brandon Stanton

And he relished a day at Lake George in the Adirondacks on his trip through the north with James Madison in 1791.26,27,28 "An abundance of speckled trout, salmon trout, bass and other fish with which it is stored, have added to our other amusements the sport of taking them," Jefferson had written Patsy. He had been as unhappy with Lake Champlain as he had been happy with Lake George, noting that the larger Champlain was "a far less pleasant water.29 It is muddy, turbulent, and yields little game" - all things Jefferson disliked in fishing as in life. — Jon Meacham

Life is maybe like deep-sea fishing. We wake up in the morning, we cast our nets into the water, an, if we are lucky, at day's end we will have netted one
maybe two
small fish. Occasionally we will net a seahorse or sometimes a shark
or a life preserver or an iceberg, or a monster. And in our dreams at night we assess our Catch of the Day
the treasures of this long, slow process of accumulation ... — Douglas Coupland

She saw the picture of idle fishing boats tied up at Peterhead; further gloom for Scotland and for a way of life that had produced such a strong culture. Fishermen had composed their songs; but what culture would a generation of computer operators leave behind them? — Alexander McCall Smith

Don't worry," he said, that grandfatherly smile spreading across his face once more, "I've been fishing for over forty years. You've got plenty of time to catch up, maybe even pass what I've done. You're a perspicacious piscatorial pursuer, and I'm sure you'll catch the big ones. — S. Bradley Stoner

In this quiet, peaceful time of twilight there is, in this great circle of life, an awful lot of hunting and fishing and catching and killing and dying and eating going on all around me. As the old fisherman said, 'That's the way with life. Sometimes you eat well; sometimes you are well-eaten.' — Paul G. Quinnett

But I think a life of raising prize cattle, going shooting two or three times a year, fishing in the summer, and interspersing the whole thing with some golf and bridge - and whenever I felt like talking or writing, doing it with abandon and with no sense of responsibility whatsoever - maybe such a life wouldn't be so bad. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll evolve to become so skilled at fishing he destroys the ocean and kills every last fish. — Craig Stone

I am my father's daughter. It was not up to me growing up. I was his hunting and fishing buddy, so I've been shooting my whole life. — Amber Heard

Once you get over the culture shock, Filey is a pleasant spot, particularly at the beginning or end of the summer, when the hotels are half full. The brave go in winter, when the wind can be bitter and biting and Filey resumes its real life as a tiny, introverted fishing community. — David Hewson

The world is crazy. You need a license to drive a car and go fishing. You don't need a license to start a family. Two people have sex and BAM! Perfectly innocent kid is born whose life will be screwed up by her parents forever. — Laurie Halse Anderson

My wife wonders why all women do not seek anglers for husbands. She has come in contact with many in her life with me and she claims that they all have a sweetness in their nature which others lack. — Ray Bergman

I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in this way postponed his initiation (to fly fishing) far too long. — Arthur Ransome

Take my friends and my home - as an outcast I'll roam: Take the money I have in the bank: It is just what I wish, but deprive me of fish, And my life would indeed be blank. — Lewis Carroll

Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element. — Zane Grey

My main aim is getting set up so that when I do quit, I can step away and re-evaluate what I want to do in life. Do I want to get to 50 years old and come back? Or will I just want to go home and be fishing, hunting and working around the house? — Boo Weekley

There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul
Like a day on a stream,
Back on the banks of the old fishing hole
Where a fellow can dream.
There's nothing so good for a man as to flee
From the city and lie
Full length in the shade of a whispering tree
And gaze at the sky.
...
It is good for the world that men hunger to go
To the banks of a stream,
And weary of sham and of pomp and of show
They have somewhere to dream.
For this life would be dreary and sordid and base
Did they not now and then
Seek refreshment and calm in God's wide, open space
And come back to be men. — Edgar Guest

I used to work out on an island called Martha's Vineyard. I ran a pizza oven, I caddied, I worked on a fishing boat, and life is very easy out there. It's a vacation lifestyle all the time. — Austin Stowell

He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks
in a circle, of course.
This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something
life, love, passion
so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him! — Jens Peter Jacobsen

What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake. — Garrison Keillor

I'm a pretty sad example of what one should do with eternal life. I've never reached any higher level of consciousness, I don't have access to any great truths, and I've never borne witness to the divine or transcendent. Some of this is just bad luck. Like working in the fishing industry in Galilee and never once running into Jesus. — Gene Doucette

He wants to accomplish something in life, learn languages, see the world, read a thousand books, he wants to discover whether there is any core, but sometimes it's hard to think and read when one is stiff and sore after a difficult fishing voyage, wet and cold after twelve hours' working in the meadows, when his thoughts can be so heavy that he can hardly lift them, then it's a long way to the core. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

Inevitable pickup trucks complete with full gun racks,
chainsaws,
fishing poles,
and big, sneering dogs in the back,
line the streets and parking lots.
Meek murmur of autumn skies,
Ford and Chevy outfits to roll through town,
as people get ready for a long, gray, foggy winter,
big, four-wheel-drive pickups with snow blades attached,
the box loaded down,
with a high stack of cordwood topped by a huge elk carcass,
to go disheartened in the midst of wretched weather,
cold, raw, continually snowing. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I am also planning to leave a lot of things undone. Part of life's mystery depends on future possibilities, and mystery is an elusive quality which evaporates when sampled frequently, to be followed by boredom. For example, catching various types of fish is on my list of good things to do, but I would be reluctant to rush into it, even if i had the time. I want no part of destroying fishing as a mysterious sport. — Michael Collins

But I couldn't block out the sound of his voice. "Hayden wasn't the son I expected to have," he said. "I'd imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I'd done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son." His voice cracked. "But my second son didn't enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn't know how to talk to him. And now I'll spend the rest of my life wishing I'd learned how." He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying. — Michelle Falkoff

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

It's actually been more like a 50-year interruption, he thought. A boy goes out fishing and has a lot of fun, and then suddenly one day his whole boring adult life starts up, with all its obligations. Fifty years later the interruption is finally over, and he can go back to fishing again. — Vidar Sundstol

I don't go birdwatching. I am birdwatching. Birdwatching is a state of being, not an activity. It doesn't depend on place, on equipment, on specific purpose, like, say, fishing. It is not a matter of organic trainspotting; it is about life and it is about living. — Simon Barnes

He'd tried fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life's greatest pleasures, and wasn't sure that he saw the point. Food he was happy with - Death liked a good meal as much as anyone else. — Anonymous

We spent afternoons kicking around in the sand, picking through the seaweed for shells, making headdresses of washed-up fishing ropes and hats from Styrofoam cups. Beach rats, we were called.

We stopped brushing our hair, and it hung in tangles spun by the salt air. We sprayed Sun-In across our heads and let it turn our hair orange in patches. Our skin peeled, and we didn't much care.

We woke up to the feel of sand in our sheets. We covered ourselves in baby oil and iodine and let the sun bake our skin. We smelled like Love's Baby Soft perfume, like summer all year long. We were tanned, with freckles across our noses. — Ilie Ruby

When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait. — Tess Gallagher

The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a frame, broad, porous and sleep-worn, as if sleep were a decay fishing her beneath the visible surface. About her head there was an effulgence as of phosphorous glowing about the circumference of a body of water - as if her life lay through her in ungainly luminous deteriorations - the troubling structure of the born somnambule. — Djuna Barnes

Dear Miss Independent,
I've decided that of all the women I've ever known, you are the only one I will ever love more than hunting, fishing, football, and power tools.
You may not know this, but the other time I asked you to marry me, the night I put the crib together, I meant it. Even though I knew you weren't ready.
God, I hope you're ready now.
Marry me, Ella. Because no matter where you go or what you do, I'll love you every day for the rest of my life.
- Jack — Lisa Kleypas

Do you want to tear your life apart and get rid of everything you've known as a lifestyle? Like seeing your family? Being with your friends? A fishing trip? A hunting trip? A night's sleep? — Walter F. Mondale

All my playmates were black. I lived in a little community called Archery (ph) in a rural area. And I didn't have any white neighbors at all. So all my kids with whom I fought and wrestled and went fishing and worked in the field and so forth were African-Americans. And that was my life. So when I got to be school age, we had to separate during the daytime, but I always felt like I was in an alien environment when I was in Plains, Georgia with white kids. I was eager to get back where I belonged with my black playmates. — Jimmy Carter

...anyone who chooses to make fishing his occupation solely for the money is in the wrong business. If no thrill is experienced in catching fish, no satisfaction in going to sea and returning to shore, no pride in exclaiming "I am a fisherman," then a life on the water will be unfulfilling, perhaps even unbearable. Among the unhappy with whom I am acquainted, perhaps the most miserable people are those who fish out of necessity rather than out of a love of the sea and the seafaring life. I have always maintained that when I no longer feel a thrill, satisfaction, and pride from fishing, I will start a new career. (pp. 248-249) — Linda Greenlaw

I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know? — Kiefer Sutherland

Our greatest hope is for the experience of joy, and often we are not as smart as we think we are when it comes to predicting what would bring us that joy ... Hope that is attached to a particular outcome is looking for pleasure but fishing for pain, because attachment itself is a source of pain. It is best to hope for an experience of life in all its fullness-a life that can embrace both joy and sorrow, and will still be at peace. — Marianne Williamson

Happy the man ... with a natural gift
for practising the right one [art] from the start
poetry, say, or fishing; whose nights are dreamless;
whose deep-sunk panoramas rise and pass
like daylight through the rod's eye or the nib's eye. — Seamus Heaney

I often accompanied my father. I really liked riding with him on his bicycle on Saturdays. He was very fond of fishing. I don't think I liked fishing. I mean, you had to sit quietly and still, but I enjoyed the ride. And it was fun, it was fun. I mean, as I say, you didn't go around lugging a deep sense of resentment. We knew, yes, we were deprived. It wasn't the same thing for white kids, but it was as full a life as you could make it. I mean, we made toys for ourselves with wires, making cars, and you really were exploding with joy! — Desmond Tutu

Every time I caught a fish, I wondered how something so small could have such clear, pure strength. It kept reminding me of another sensation, from another realm. The fish on the line, I eventually realized, felt like the baby, kicking inside you. Or the shocking, life-hungry pull of the baby on the breast. Perhaps fishing is like quickening for men, a long and patient wait for a few electric moments when they feel connected to another life. — Marni Jackson

Never retire! Do what you do and keep doing it. But don't do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, go fishing ... Then Monday to Thursday, do what you've been doing all your life. My point is: Live full and don't retreat. — Mel Brooks

As with Isaiah's vision in the Temple, and many other scenes both biblical and modern, Peter's change from fisherman to shepherd comes through his facing of his own sin and his receiving of forgiveness, as Jesus with his three-times-repeated question goes back to Peter's triple denial and then offers him forgiveness precisely in the form of a transformed and newly commissioned life. Those who don't want to face that searching question and answer may remain content to help the world with its fishing. Those who find the risen Jesus going to the roots of their rebellion, denial, and sin and offering them love and forgiveness may well also find themselves sent off to be shepherds instead. Let those with ears listen. — N. T. Wright

I worry about kids today not having time to build a tree house or ride a bike or go fishing. I worry that life is getting faster and faster. — John Lasseter

Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man. — Herbert Hoover

A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart — Roderick Haig-Brown

Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That's really all you need in life. — Brandi Carlile

I had a dream about you. We were ice fishing in my freezer. I caught a few cold beers, and you wondered if we should drink them, or throw them back because they were babies. — Dora J. Arod

It is utterly soothing to fly fish for trout. All other considerations or worries drift away and you couldn't keep them close if you wanted. Perhaps it's standing thigh deep in a river with the water passing at the exact but varying speed of life. You easily recognize this mortality and it dissipates into the landscape. — Jim Harrison

In our fields, on our fishing vessels, in our factories and our homes, there are people deprived of their freedom and trapped in a life of unimaginable suffering. — Theresa May

One year, on vacation in Hawaii, I was relaxing at a beach, watching whales in the distance, when a fisherman, obviously a local, drove up in his pick-up truck. He got out with a dozen fishing rods. Not one. A dozen. He baited each hook, cast all the lines into the ocean, and set the rods in the sand. Intrigued, I wandered over and asked him for an explanation. "It's simple," he said. "I love fish but I hate fishin'. I like eatin', not catchn'. So I cast out 12 lines. By sunset, some of them will have caught a fish. Never all of 'em. So if I only cast one or two I might go hungry. But 12 is enough so some always catch. Usually there's enough for me and extras to sell to local restaurants. This way, I live the life I want." The simple fellow had unwittingly put his finger on a powerful secret. The flaw in most businesses, that keeps them always in desperate need - which suppresses prices - is: too few lines cast in the ocean. — Dan S. Kennedy

Sometimes Stuart seems like an irritable fisherman. He bobs about, on the disruption of his life, a small, unsteady figure, fishing for order. Then he gets into a rage, 'goes right on one', and it is as if he's taken out the gutting knife and mashed his catch to a pulp - every sign of hated, repressive, reminding order is gone again. — Alexander Masters

To the Finnish, being outdoors in nature isn't about paying homage to nature or to ourselves, the way it tends to be for Americans. We fetishize are life lists, catalog peaks bagged and capture pristine scenes of grand wilderness It is largely an individual experience. For the Finnish, though, nature is about expressing a close-knit identity. Nature is where they can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry-picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming and Nordic skiing. — Florence Williams