Flounder Quotes & Sayings

Most people are sensitized to animals through their cats and dogs, but for me it was a flounder. I used to go fishing with my dad as a kid and always felt bad about yanking these panic-stricken creatures from the water. I stopped eating fish as an adolescent and went vegan at twenty. — Dan Mathews

Progress stems from education, culture, freedom and equality. Without these fundamentals, mankind will flounder. — Matt Chandler

So many interviews, even ones that I consider really intelligent and good writers, will do the, like, 'Oh, you're not taking your clothes off like Miley Cyrus and all these girls' thing, which to me is just the weirdest thing to say to someone ... Now when people are like, 'Tell me what you think of Miley!' I'll say, 'What do you think of Miley?' and they'll flounder and say, 'Well, I think she's really talented ... ' and I'm like, there you go. — Lorde

If Paul did not love the Corinthians, he would walk away from them and let them flounder in their own cesspool of sin. Instead, he is proactive. He confronts, warns, writes, visits, and even humbles himself before them (2 Cor. 2:5-10; 12:21). — Alexander Strauch

Faith is a thing of the mind. If you do not believe that God is in control and has formed you for a purpose, then you will flounder on the high seas of purposelessness, drowning in the currents and drifting further into nothingness. — Ravi Zacharias

By some miracle, Charlotte's polite smile never wavered. It was a proud moment for her. After all, it wasn't every day that a little old lady told you right to your face that your bosom was as flat as a flounder. — Olivia Parker

'From Here to Eternity' happens to be fourteen-carat entertainment. The main trouble is that it is too entertaining for a film in which love affairs flounder, one sweet guy is beaten to death, and a man of high principles is mistaken for a saboteur and killed on a golf course. — Manny Farber

Africa has lost its dream, and when people don't have a dream and don't pursue it, they flounder. People are shocked that I would move to Africa. But I say the place of greatest need is the place of greatest opportunity. — Bruce Wilkinson

She noticed a monger's window where, on a bed of ice, a wonderful scene was worked in fish. A skiff made of flounder fillets rode waves of shrimp and blue-black mussels. A whole salmon was a lighthouse, shot out rays of glittering mackerel. All framed by a border of crab claws. She — Annie Proulx

Because of the collapsing economy of America, it is nearly a mathematical certainty that this ship will soon flounder. — Nicholas Notarberardino

despair

sometimes
hope leads us on
teases us with
its shiny baubles
its stunning horizons

it can carry us over
the roiling turmoil
the raging storm
then as easily
with its cornucopia of lies
drop us into the waves

to flounder against its loss — Barry DeCarli

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way. — Henry Miller

Don't flounder in the preambles of the past
Wounded with regrets; don't let autumnal
Nostalgia blind you to the sounds and scents
Of the present's Spring; you're a native of
The pellucid moment, make it infinite beyond
The curving snake of passing time and space.
Learn to die in the infinitely elusive moment. — Rumi

Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit to the solitary traveller, or murmur in his ear like sirens lolloping away on the green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like bunches of roses, or rise to the surface like pale faces which fishermen flounder through floods to embrace. — Virginia Woolf

Theirs is the customary human reaction when confronted with innovation: to flounder about attempting to adapt old responses to new situations or to simply condemn or ignore the harbingers of change
a practice refined by the Chinese emperors, who used to execute messengers bringing bad news. The new technological environments generate the most pain among those least prepared to alter their old value structures. The literati find the new electronic environment far more threatening than do those less committed to literacy as a way of life. When an individual or social group feels that its whole identity is jeopardized by social or psychic change, its natural reaction is to lash out in defensive fury. But for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place. — Marshall McLuhan

And if it took me more than thirty seconds of thinking, he wouldn't let me flounder. He would jump right in and explain. Not like so many others who liked to call themselves teachers. — Lili St. Crow

And I have two eyes. I've seen that little melodrama play out between you and that other tracker. Fish? Flounder? What's his name? — Amanda Hocking

As a father of six kids and as a man who's been transformed by the power of the gospel, I would never just let my kids flounder and just sort of try to figure out their own way through life when I know that I've got the best guide on the planet - God and His word. — Kirk Cameron

The people we love get under our skin and crawl through our veins and fine their way into our heart. They choke up our blood flow and mess up our breathing and tangle themselves through our bodies like wire. Like razors, like fire.
We remember them even when we don't remember them.
We try and forget, but it's pointless.
Even amnesia. Even comas and brain damage and traumatic shock.
Whatever makes us not remember, we still remember.
Our minds flounder like fish but our bodies...
Our bodies remember. — Katrina Leno

Utopians ... consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind's totalization may flounder. — Thomas Steven Molnar

Occasionally she would flounder in the fog of the blues; what she had seen in the shadows of the night would make her irritable or ashamed or irksome or gloomy for hours on end. This was her daily struggle through the in-between world. Jean discovered that he could chase away the dream-ghosts by brewing Catherine a cup of hot coffee and guiding her down to the sea to drink it. — Nina George

Madam, my father has left me flopping like a flounder at low tide and you say what's the matter. — Harper Lee

Satan's first appearance in the Bible included an attack on a marriage - trying to divide Adam and Eve. His tactics have not changed. He wants our marriages to flounder and fail, because he knows that few things will discourage us more. — Billy Graham

Give a man a fish shop
and he'll flounder.
Teach a man to manage a fish shop,
and he'll learn to fill it! — Cameron Semmens

Was it as Ada suggested, that we can choose our own endings, joy over sorrow? Or does the cruel world just give and take, give and take, while we flounder through the wilderness? — Eowyn Ivey

My first paying job might have been doing a play, actually. My mom paid me to dress up as a flounder at my sister's 'Little Mermaid' - themed birthday party when I was little. — Paul Dano

If my career isn't going that well, I'd rather it flounder than desperately trying to show up on red carpets: 'I'm for hire! Remember me!' — James McAvoy

When they'd first come out in the morning, a single flounder lay flapping and puffing in the breezeway, one sad, swollen eye looking back toward the sea. — Dennis Lehane

Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie's face in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?'
'Never.' I said. 'Though there was a flounder for sale on a fishmonger's barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home ... — Sarah Waters

People learn best and fastest from making their own mistakes and fixing them. It's painful to watch a child flounder, but in the long run children become more resilient and resourceful if they have to deal with failure once in a while. One of the biggest fears of today's business strategists is that we are producing a coddled workforce of straight "A" students who are afraid to go out on a limb for fear they'll fall. American innovation was born out of metaphorical scraped knees and bloody noses. A generation that's been told they shouldn't even touch a doorknob without applying antibacterial hand sanitizer may not have the rough and tumble qualities needed to compete in a global dog-eat-dog economy. — Lynne C. Lancaster

Writing that flirts with incoherence can just as readily flounder as writing characterized by simplicity and composure. There is no reliable formula for originality, and strategies that are distinguished as innovative in their first incarnation can quickly become stale in the hands of lesser artists. — Joanna Scott

Many people flounder about in life because they do not have a purpose, an objective toward which to work. — George Halas

It is better to understand a part of truth and apply it to our lives than to understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce the mystery of existence. — Jawaharlal Nehru

You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves. — Terry Brooks

The traveler took a long pull and stepped confidently onto the water, only to sink and flounder desperately before he regained the shore.
"Hey," he shouted at the wizards, "why didn't that wine work for me?"
"The wine's fine," a wizard called back. "But if you'd told us you wanted to cross, we'd have told you where the rocks just below the surface were. — Jack Maguire

Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership. — Larry McMurtry

Forgive me. It's true. I wander. I wander in my heart and my thoughts. Such is the curse of any emigrant, to abandon one's home and never find another, to always flounder in a sea of remorse. — Robert Alexander

To Foreswear vengeance is to chain oneself to forgiveness, to flounder in pardon, to be tainted by the hatred smothered within. — Emile M. Cioran

Who would not rather flounder in the fight than not have known the glory of the fray? — Richard Hovey

There was a tank of special flounder about fifteen feet away from the octopus tank," he said. The fish were part of a study. But to the researchers' dismay, the flounder started disappearing, one by one. One day they caught the culprit red-handed. The octopus had been slipping out of her tank and eating the flounder! When the octopus was discovered, Scott said, "she gave a guilty, sideways look and slithered away. — Sy Montgomery

In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact. — Pete Gill

How we flounder when emotion overtakes us. — V.S. Naipaul

So little by little, with painstaking slowness, I was learning to surf and, even less quickly, learning what it was to love another person. Kim was teaching me that part. Kim demanded to be loved well. She would have nothing less. She would guide me, nudge me, let me flounder, set me back on the right track until I got it. It was astounding. I couldn't believe she loved me so steadily and forgave my lapses and gave me the nod to try again, better. I couldn't believe my great fortune in finding someone willing to go the distance with me, willing to stick around till I got it right. — Peter Heller

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. — George Santayana

The supreme God that we serve has the final say in all matters. There is no higher law and there is no greater power. Hebrews 6:13 states, "He could swear by none greater, so He swore by himself." Since God has a supreme status, When the ideas of man conflict with the laws of God, the ideas of man are doomed. When the concepts of false teachings purvey useless information, they may flounder and flop around on the canvass of human curiosity for some time, but when they rear their ugly head against God's law they are on a collision course with extinction. ~ From the book Supremacy Clause by Pastor Myers — David Myers

Insanity is something like drowning,' said Sparrow. 'You go under; you flounder without direction; — Frank Herbert

By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world. — Mark Twain

Under the all-encompassing aid system, too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations. — Dambisa Moyo

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures. — Audre Lorde

Flounder, flounder, in the sea, Come, I pray thee, here to me; For my wife, good Ilsabil, Wills not as I'd have her will. — HarperPerennial Classics

If tonight is my last, I would run towards the sea, wildly swim the tides, the jump up the hills, flounder the cliffs and take all big strides, for I am a wanderer, awed by nature's charm who would love to breathe his last in its embracing arms. — Arvind Parashar

Ah, fish, there is no fare
Quite like a flounder! They surely will not miss
A piece or two from stacks of sole like this;
I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share.
Look! the lamplight on the lane is pretty
They're back from walking out on Dover Beach.
I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech,
For we are in a world untouched by pity
Where ignorant humans curse the kitty.
(From Dover Sole) — Henry N. Beard

We all fall. Every one of us. We fall, and we fail, and we flail, and we flounder. We do right by someone and end up hurting someone else. We get beat up and we do our share of beating. We screw up more than we succeed. That's life, babe. But those successes? They're so bright and beautiful that they swallow the darkness - every blot, stain, and mar on our souls. — Megan Thomason

The New York Times and Politico report , as Bush continues to flounder on the campaign trail, backers are placing some of the blame on Right To Rise and its inability to sell their candidate. — Chris Hayes

Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us. — Frank Herbert

The revolution goes on; a man does not make the revolution, not a thousand men, not an army and not a party; the revolution comes from the people as they reach toward God, and a little of God is in each person and each will not forget it. This it is the revolution when slaves shake their chains and the revolution when a strong man bends toward a weaker and says, "Here, comrade, is my arm." The revolution goes on and nothing stops it; but because the people are seeking what is good, not what is wicked or powerful or cruel or rich or venal, but simply what is good
because of that the people flounder and feel along one dark road after another. The people no more all-seeing than their rulers once were; it is in intention that they differ. — Howard Fast

Every good endeavor should be done with purpose. Without a clear sense of purpose, our efforts to do a good thing well can flounder. But with a clear purpose, we are far more likely to persevere. — Jen Wilkin

We surf-fished in the breakers catching spottail bass and flounder for dinner. I discovered that summer that I loved to cook and feed my friends, and I enjoyed the sound of their praise as they purred with pleasure at the meals I fixed over glowing iron and fire. I had the run of my grandparents' garden and I would put ears of sweet corn in aluminum foil after washing them in seawater and slathering them with butter and salt and pepper. Beneath the stars we would eat the beefsteak tomatoes okra and the field peas flavored with salt pork and jalapeno peppers. I would walk through the disciplined rows that brimmed with purple eggplants and watermelons and cucumbers, gathering vegetables. My grandfather, Silas, told us that summer that low country earth was so fertile you could drop a dime into it and grow a money tree. — Pat Conroy

Then why flounder around waiting for good business? Get the costs down by better management. Get the prices down to the buying power. — Henry Ford