Quotes & Sayings About Hawaiian

Traditional Saying (Hawaiian): Only when the water gourd isn't full do you hear it gurgling. (Those who are ignorant have an awful lot to say.) — John Richard Stephens

The ukulele totally fits that whole hipster community or whatever you want to call it, but then at the same time it works great in nursing homes where senior citizens get together and play, and then as the traditional Hawaiian instrument with people doing the Hula and strumming the ukulele and singing. — Jake Shimabukuro

And maybe Bob-with-the-Hawaiian-shirt was right. Maybe it was cool being on a planet on the far side of the known galaxy. And maybe it was even cooler escaping and getting home again. But the coolest thing of all was having my best friend back. — Mark Haddon

Sect. 32. Hawaiian authorities are able to throw no light, and conjecture, but little light upon the true meaning of Ia. It is evidently the name or appellation of, or stands to represent, some deity. (The only name of a deity corresponding in form to this is the Hebrew JAH. Ps. 68: 4.) — David Malo

I realize we can't turn back the hands of time, and sometimes it doesn't help to dwell on things we can't control. However, there are still many wonderful aspects of Hawai'i that we tend to neglect. It's a matter of priorities. I guess. But when we don't give these islands a chance. I think we really lose out.
("Mele Mele" Mango Memorie WITH SAM CHOY: COOKING FROM THE HEART) — John Richard Stephens

Now is History as fast as the mind remembers. — Kirby Wright

The Hawaiian Islands were discovered by hardy Polynesian sailors, who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean in primitive canoes, braving violent storm-tossed seas for months at a time. My family and I arrived by modern commercial aviation, which was infinitely worse. — Dave Barry

The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination. — Rob Brezsny

My dancing is Hawaiian-inspired but I also get a little fresh when it comes to my faster songs. — Lana Del Rey

There's a beautiful forgiveness practice I love which is quite simple. It's called "Ho'oponopono" (pronounced: ho-o-pono-pono) and it's a lot easier to do than it is to say. It's a Kahuna Hawaiian technique, which involves repeating four phrases internally toward yourself or the person whom you're having a hard time forgiving. — Marci Shimoff

It's a blessing to be paid to be in paradise. The Hawaiian people are so friendly. — Rebecca Mader

My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them. And Bruce Lee was amazing. — Jason Scott Lee

As for pineapple, it's far more versatile than you might think, and certainly merits wider use than in Hawaiian pizzas and pina coladas and on cheesy cocktail sticks. — Yotam Ottolenghi

The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night. — Dave Barry

I'm a Hawaiian shirt guy. I've made that life decision. — Chris O'Dowd

It is not just the history of the Hawaiian islands but the significance of the ordinary people whose lives - many quite extraordinary - make up that history. — Alan Brennert

Hawaiian to me is a feeling of getting somewhere, without stepping on anybodys toes, without causing friction with anybody. — Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Ooo ahe-e, I aya oa a, she said in yawnspeak, a language - not unlike Hawaiian - known for its paucity of consonants. — Christopher Moore

As a child, I was raised by native Hawaiian elders - three old women who took care of me while my parents worked. — Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey

I'm enjoying two beautiful visions tonight. Watching you stand there against a marvelous background has to be the most intriguing sunset I have ever experienced. — K.S. Collier

Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap. — Steve Martin

Go to the east shore of any of the Hawaiian Islands, and that's a pretty big lesson on how much plastic is ending up in the ocean. Basically, the Hawaiian Islands act as a filter out in the middle of the Pacific. — Jack Johnson

In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions. — Roger Ebert

My favorite herb - lamb's bread. Kali. I like Hawaiian. But for some reason, you communicate better with Jamaican herb. The best Jamaican herb, it have more energy, more everything to it. — Bob Marley

I mean, people don't know what race I am. They never know if I'm Hawaiian or Italian or Mexican or Spanish or white. I could play Jewish, I could play anything. — Tyler Posey

I'm a fast foodie - like, a foodie, but with food courts. I'd love to go with all my friends to a food court that's also a buffet - with unlimited orange chicken from Panda Express, curly fries from Arby's, Hawaiian pizza from Sbarro, and Coke Zero. I'm a simple man with simple pleasures. — Tyler Oakley

I'm part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You'd hate to be me — Raymond Chandler

He was half-white and half-Korean, but when asked about his ethnicity, he always said Hawaiian, a declaration of racial neutrality that, more often than not, let him avoid further inquest. — Don Lee

I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.' — Tony Danza

I will never understand the appeal of the Hawaiian pizza. — Judd Winick

Being shaken to death by a Hawaiian tourist look-alike was not how Arena imagined her death. — Lynn Blackmar

Tito snored away on the other bed. Out there, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn't find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness ... — Thomas Pynchon

My mother would organize huge parties for my elementary school classmates. To prepare, she would go back to the bakery in her old neighborhood of Inwood and get special shamrock cookies. Hawaiian Punch was served and we had shamrock napkins. It was a lot of fun. — Christine Quinn

I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music. — Violet Duke

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. — Sarah Vowell

The wide-ranging birds that visit islands of the ocean in migration may also have a good deal to do with the distribution of plants, and perhaps even of some insects and minute land shells. From a ball of mud taken from a bird's plumage, Charles Darwin raised 82 separate plants, belonging to 5 distinct species! Many plant seeds have hooks or prickles, ideal for attachment to feathers. Such birds as the Pacific golden plover, which annually flies from the mainland of Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands and even beyond, probably figure in many riddles of plant distribution. — Rachel Carson

He reminded me of one of those adventure seekers on TV. He hadn't shaved in a few days at least, and his reddish hair was suffering from intense bed head. His Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts completed the look. I was inclined to ask him if he knew we were all marked for death or if he just thought he was taking a long cruise. — Jessica Fortunato

If you don't have at least a working knowledge of the Hawaiian language ... you can't chant well. You cannot ... receive the images of poetry paints for you. It's like having peas and no pod. — Keali'i Reichel

Wearing a Hawaiian shirt, you don't ever come across as offensive. Nobody sees you as a threat. You see someone in a Hawaiian shirt, and you are like 'this guy is ready to party.' — Gabriel Iglesias

Many exhibits from this aquarium use Hawaii's abundant natural daylight. This allows Waikiki to display only live coral, which creates beautiful exhibits. It's also a world leader in the propagation of live coral. The aquarium features some unusual and rarely seen species, including the chambered nautilus and the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. — John Grant

ho'oponopono (Hawaiian):
Solving a problem by talking it out. After an invocation of the gods, the aggrieved parties sit down and discuss the issue until it is set right (pono means righteousness). — Howard Rheingold

If that shit is a Hawaiian print, I'm going to kill you. — J.R. Ward

Being a Scotsman, I wear a skirt quite a lot, but we're allowed. I have an incredibly loud Hawaiian shirt that's pink and a particularly disgusting turquoise, but I just wear it on days when I'm in a strange mood. — Sean Biggerstaff

George liked it so, that this island was uncompromising and hard for tourists to negotiate. Not all welcome smiles and black men in Hawaiian shirts, playing pan by the poolside. No flat, crystal beaches, no boutique hotels. Trinidad was oil-rich, didn't need tourism. Trinidadians openly sniggered at the sunburnt American women who wandered down the pavement in shorts and bikini top. Trinidad was itself; take it or leave it. — Monique Roffey

The people to whom your fathers told of the living God, and taught to call 'Father,' and whom the sons now seek to despoil and destroy, are crying aloud to Him in their time of trouble; and He will keep His promise, and will listen to the voices of His Hawaiian children lamenting for their homes. — Lili'uokalani

Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands. — Lili'uokalani

A man goes to a foreign country and kills somebody who's not aggressing against him; in a Hawaiian shirt he's a criminal, in a green costume he's a hero who gets a parade and a pension. So that, as a culture, we remain in a state of moral insanity. To point out these contradictions to people in society is to be labeled insane. This is how insane society remains, that anybody who points out logical opposites in the most essential human topic of ethics, is considered to be insane. — Stefan Molyneux

Take no heed of good looks , but rather of callused hand.
Old Maori saying: Choose a husband for his work, not his appearance. — Toni Polancy

The Hawaiian shirts fairly scream to be put on, — Maryrose Wood

He shouldn't have shot Tiki," Logan said. "Hawaiian gods get even. Did you see what Tiki did to his foot? It flew right off his leg when you kicked it! — Janet Evanovich

It was a beautiful, clear Southern California kind of Christmas Eve, the kind where Santa shows up in khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and shades, flashing a peace sign with one hand and sipping a Corona with the other. — Z.A. Maxfield

My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

New land formed by lava flows belongings to the state, not to abutting property owners. So ruled the Hawai'i Supreme Court in 1977. — Larue W. Piercy

By the dawn of the millennium, the hallways at Microsoft were no longer home to barefoot programmers in Hawaiian shirts working through nights and weekends toward a common goal of excellence; instead, life behind the thick corporate walls had become staid and brutish. — Kurt Eichenwald

Nearly every president in the past 100 years has declared national monuments, from Teddy Roosevelt creating the Grand Canyon National Monument to George W. Bush preserving 10 islands and 140,000 square miles of ocean waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. — Frances Beinecke

Finn stood away from all the water with his friend Dillard, who had taken the occasion to borrow one of his father's Hawaiian shirts. Finn thought he looked pretty cool. — Ridley Pearson

The boat bounced hard on the waves. Reflexively, Tally shot out a hand to brace herself on the closest stable object.
She stared in horror at her own pale fingers gripping the front waistband of the pirate's shorts.
His purple Hawaiian shorts were now riding low, very low, on his hips, as the weight of her hand dragged the fabric down.
And down ... — Cherry Adair

The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe. — Roland Burrage Dixon

I think I tried on the hardcore scene's outfits maybe once, and then I just figured I'd stick to Hawaiian shirts. — Dave Sitek

We, the Hawaiian people, who are born from the union of Papahanaumoku and Wakea, earth mother and sky father, and who have lived in these islands for over 100 generations, will always have the moral right to the lands of Hawai'i now and forever, no matter what any court says. — Lilikala K. Kame'eleihiwa

Coming to Hawai'i is like going from black and white to color. — John Richard Stephens

I can't even speak Hawaiian, but if you go there and listen to a Hawaiian song, you get captured because it's so beautiful, like the melody is just gorgeous and you know Bob Marley is on the radio every single day. It's very reggae-influenced down there. Basically, you haven't been to paradise if you haven't been to Hawaii. — Bruno Mars

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. — Anonymous

Honscheid came over from West Germany for the first Hawaiian World Cup and discovered jumping, which was new to him, although Mike Horgan and I were jumping in 1974 and 1975. There — Eric Von Hippel

An evening up on the Empire State roof-the strangest experience. The huge tomb in steel and glass, the ride to the 84th floor and there, under the clouds, a Hawaiian string quartet, lounge, concessions and, a thousand feet below, New York-a garden of golden lights winking on and off, automobiles, trucks winding in and out, and not a sound. All as silent as a dead city-and it looks adagio down there. — Dawn Powell

A trim and tan bikini clad Aphrodite — Richard L. Ratliff

The immersive stories of This Is Paradise are a lithe blend of formal invention and traditional narrative pleasures. As such they reflect Kristiana Kahakauwila's intimate but expansive vision of a Hawai'i forged from the collisions of past and present, here and there. Her protagonists are as richly distinctive as the pidgin they speak, and yet each struggles profoundly with identity-that negotiation between ourselves and the world, which is at once Hawaiian, American, universally and compellingly human. — Peter Ho Davies

The Hawaiian language needs to be studied globally as a language of life. — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

Setting aside embassies, consulates and military bases, Rose Atoll of American Samoa is the southernmost point of U.S. controlled territory. Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and half a dozen other islands are all further south than Ka Lae.
While Ka Lae is not the southermost point of the United States, it is the southernmosr point of the fifty states. — John Richard Stephens

President Obama , I guess, is starting to confess to some of his anxieties. In a recent interview, President Obama said, 'I miss being anonymous.' He said, 'In the old days, I could blend in with all the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.' — Conan O'Brien

Did you know? Duke Kahanamoku competed in four Olympics from 1912 to 1932 setting three world-records, while winning three gold medals, two silver, and one bronze. — John Richard Stephens

The marketing people are always talking about something called 'consumers'. I have this image of a fat little man in baggy Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a straw hat with beer-can openers dangling from it, clutching fistfuls of dollars. — Robert James Waller

I'll try to communicate, Taylor said. She spoke slowly and deliberately. Hello! We need help. Is your village close?
My village is Denver. And I think it's a long way from here. I'm Nicole Ade. Miss Colorado.
We have a Colorado where we're from too! Tiara said. She swiveled her hips, spread her arms wide, then brought her hands together prayer-style and bowed. Kipa aloha.
Nicole stared. I speak English. I'm American. Also, did you learn those moves from Barbie's Hawaiian Vacation DVD?
Ohmigosh, yes! Do your people have that, too? — Libba Bray

Each year, I await with dread the federal government's catalog of endangered and threatened species in the Hawaiian Islands, where I was raised and where I live. — Susanna Moore

The revolution of 1893 and the annexation that followed undermined a culture and ended the life of a nation. Compared to what such operations have brought to other countries, though, this one ended well. — Stephen Kinzer

verybody has an imagination. There's the construction worker who can close his eyes and imagine a Hawaiian vacation. There's the corporate executive with visions of that next big promotion. There's the stay-at-home mother and her perfectly built "cabana boy" who will sweep her off her feet. For a small group of us, we've been fortunate enough to be able to use our imaginations to make a living. — R.A. Salvatore

And what's with the shirt? You think you're in Fiji?"
"It's like being on vactaion. all of the time. — Gerard Way

At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity and subsequent historical events. — Isabella Bird

The Census Bureau is thinking of creating a new category because so many kids don't know how to describe themselves using the existing categories. I call these kids the "Keanu Reeves Generation," after the actor who has a Hawaiian father and a Welsh mother. — Richard Rodriguez

I was a very quiet, shy child. I grew up in a small town, Louisville, Kentucky, and there weren't too many Hawaiian-Filipino girls, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't look like everyone else and didn't feel I belonged ... But these things only build character and make you stronger. It taught me to grow into the woman I was to become. — Nicole Scherzinger

Out there, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn't find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness . . . how a certain hand might reach terribly out of darkness and reclaim the time, easy as taking a joint from a doper and stubbing it out for good. — Thomas Pynchon

I greatly enjoyed the Hawaiian Islands. They are a real little paradise in spite of the influx of Americans who have made it one of their most pleasant 'centers of resort': the soft climate and luxuriance of the tropics; the greenness, the fragrance, the flowers - extraordinary flowers covering the tallest trees and turning them into huge bouquets. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I may look like a laid-back Hawaiian, but I'm 240 pounds, and when I'm walking around that kitchen, you don't want to get in my way. — Ippy Aiona

My proposal that Fed governors should signal their commitment to public service by wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts has so far gone unheeded. — Ben Bernanke

As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I'd say I was Hawaiian. — Juan Felipe Herrera

On its 2015 list, the Fish and Wildlife Service included the 'ea, or hawksbill turtle, as well as the green turtle, Ridley sea turtle, leatherback turtle and loggerhead turtle. Four mammals are considered endangered: the Hawaiian hoary bat; the kohola, or humpback whale; the sperm whale; and the endemic Hawaiian monk seal. — Susanna Moore

Kaohinani is a Hawaiian word meaning gatherer of beautiful things. — Rob Brezsny

I farm taro. I have eight varieties of taro, which is a staple of the Hawaiian people from about 2,000 years ago, and sweet potatoes, and it's a sustainable living, agriculture, off the grid. — Jason Scott Lee

Exploitation was rampant before statehood, and various factions actively tried to eradicate the roots of Hawaiian culture in the process of converting the natives to European religious beliefs. Some of the results can never be undone. We try to honor what is left. — Todd Rundgren

I'm proud of being from Hawaii, and I'm proud of being Hawaiian, but I'm more than that, too. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple. — Bruno Mars

Make good the good in you ... and you will slowly steal into the Hawaiian heart, which is all of softness, and gentleness, and sweetness. — Jack London

Traditional (Hawaiian Saying): A road goes down, up and level. In other words. life is like a road. — John Richard Stephens

Umica ka hanu
HOLD THE BREATH
Be patient; don't give up. — Toni Polancy

The diaries also revealed a deeply sensitive, intelligent woman, one who had hoped to start a college for Hawaiian women, affording them the 'same education as men.' She had planned to open a bank for women, enabling them to handle their own financial affairs. She recognized the need for more female lawyers and physicians, the need for women's rights over their bodies, and their destinies. And lastly, though she had a fondness for men, she felt women 'basically didn't need them. — Kiana Davenport

Moke Kupihea has the strength of conviction necessary to impart to the world a more sensitive account of Hawaiian kahuna heritage, which comes down to him from the priesthood line from which he descends. — Rubellite Kawena Johnson

Though we came from our native Hawaiian mother, Chad and I were perceived and therefore raised as black, which widely cast us as outsiders, nonlocals - and being seen as local in Hawaii was currency. When we first returned to Oahu, we spoke with a Texas twang that also got us teased. Chad has strong emotions surrounding those first few months; he was traumatized by his apparent blackness, which was a nonevent in Dallas and Oakland, where we were among many black kids. In Hawaii, we were some of the few mixed black kids around. And both our parents taught us that because the world would perceive us as black, we were black. — Janet Mock

People go surfing before work and paddling afterward. My husband is from Wisconsin, and he goes to work in his Hawaiian shirt. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. — William Christopher Handy

One day during filming, George Clooney was wearing his surf shirt and board shorts, and my six-year-old daughter was in the background as an extra, playing in the sand - playing herself. She and Clooney suddenly looked equally Hawaiian, equally related to the place I call home. — Kaui Hart Hemmings