Moat Quotes & Sayings

Winds flap the sail, tortoise and snake are silent, a great plan looms. A bridge will fly over this moat dug by heaven and be a road from north to south. We will make a stone wall against the upper river to the west and hold back steamy clouds and rain of Wu peaks. Over tall chasms will be a calm lake, and if the goddess of these mountains is not dead she will marvel at the changed world. — Mao Zedong

All I want to shout is 'Moaty, it's Gazza!', and I guarantee me and him could sit and chat. I would say, 'Why don't you just put the gun away, throw it in the river? The police are not going to kill you. — Paul Gascoigne

Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor. — Edwin Percy Whipple

What do you see when you look at me?"
My eyes narrowed and I pressed my lips together, weighing my thoughts. All of his bimbo admirers aside, what did I see? What did my gut tell me about this man? What did it say that allowed me to wind up here with him, under such impulsive circumstances?
"You're a sad man," I swallowed. "You're arrogant and set in your ways, but that creates a fortress for you. It's your safe haven. Behind the moat is someone who has lost something he loved, only I'm not sure what, or who. You're afraid of something and your loyalty is hidden away in a cell, wounded by betrayal." I rested my head on the pillow. "That's what I see."
"On second thought," he exhaled, letting his head drop next to mine. "You're psychic. — Rachael Wade

Lexington, Kentucky looks like paradise. Acres of grass as green and tender as a golf course putting green surround hilltop mansions. New Circle Road--a beltway enveloping the city's heartland like a moat--attempts to separate the wealthy landowners from the encroaching strip centers and fast-food joins that are symbolic of the rest of the state .... Combining the traditional feelings of Southerners with the uniquely gorgeous landscape of the bluegrass, Lexingtonians consider themselves and their region the cream of the crop--not only of Kentucky, but also of the nation. — Sally Denton

You always have to evolve - the minute you start building a moat around you to keep yourself safe, you're going to lose. — Diplo

I give up," Baz whined. "I'm going to go drown myself in the moat. Tell my mother I always knew she loved me best. — Rainbow Rowell

What god do you serve? Inej had asked him. Whichever will grant me good fortune. Fortunate people didn't end up racing ass over teakettle beneath an ice moat in hostile territory. — Leigh Bardugo

Say it."
"Don't do this to me ... " I whispered painfully. "We can't do this again."
"You're a horrible liar," Eli growled as he pressed his fingers into my thighs. He watched me, his gaze all-consuming, and said, "Your eyes are as dark as a castle moat by midnight, mi cielo. Lower your drawbridge and let me cross; let me in."
"Eli, I-"
"Forget him. For the next hour and a half, you're going to do everything that makes you wonder in this world. And then I'm going to love you again. — Nadege Richards

I laughed. So, let me get this straight. You slayed the dragon, jumped over the moat, climbed the tower of the evil King's castle, saved the princes, and rode off with her into sunset aka Shadow land. Why, you're my knight in shining armour. — Jayde Scott

Pushing to his feet in an effort to avoid some of the water, Bram gave his wet and distinctly smelly dog a pat before he straightened, his breath becoming lodged in his throat when Miss Plum began walking toward him. Regret settled in as the thought struck him that there was really no way to avoid finally making her acquaintance even while smelling much like his dog. Summoning up a smile, he was about to offer her a greeting when a trace of smoke coming from one of the castle towers captured his attention. Knowing full well there was only one reasonable explanation for the smoke, he stepped toward Miss Plum just as a yell split the air. "Watch out below." As the roar of a cannon sounded, Bram did the only thing that sprang to mind. He yanked Miss Plum close to him, locked his arms around her slender body, and . . . jumped back into the moat. — Jen Turano

She thought she'd put up with however many years of stonewalling for a good reason, and she'd just figured out that as far as Castle Hubby went, she hadn't even crossed the moat yet. — Jim Shepard

Every thought and word that a novelist thinks or writes is part of that castle constructed from sands on the beach of Me, including the turret or rampart or moat he may have thought or written on behalf of someone or something else. — Steve Erickson

A penny for the moat, where all the ashen song be wrote - a tune for man, so long eloped in hours of decision and derisive hope. Flutter, flutter heart, beyond your base and noble part. All eyes behold the passing. — Chris Galford

Assyria had no more prospect of halting the human flow than can the British government stop illegal entrants to the UK, although an effective natural moat surrounds the British Isles. There is little hope that the US Department of Homeland Security will have greater success with its border fence than did King Shulgi of Ur and his successors, whose 'wall to keep out the Amorites' failed to prevent the migrants' eventual takeover of all lower Mesopotamia and their founding of Old Babylon. — Paul Kriwaczek

Mother yelled, 'Christ, this is the craziest snatch'n'grab I've ever seen!'
'It's desperation over style, Mother.' He hurried over to the tail end of the suspended tanker truck, to the two cables that rose up from it to the rim of the massive moat.
'But did you have to destroy everything?' she shouted.
'I haven't destroyed everything yet. Hurry up, this isn't over! This way! — Matthew Reilly

As the missile flew high above the moat-lake, there was a small, almost inaudible explosion, like that of a fire cracker meant for a child.

Lakshman's awe was quickly replaced by disappointment. He frowned. 'That's it? Is that the famed Asuraastra? — Amish Tripathi

Here we find the moat of thieves. And just as a lizard, with a quick, slick slither, Flicks across the highway from hedge to hedge, Fleeter than a flash, in the battering dog-day weather, A fiery little monster, livid, in a rage, Black as any peppercorn, came and made a dart At the guts of the others, and leaping to engage One of the pair, it pierced him at the part Through which we first draw food; then loosed its grip And fell before him, outstretched and apart. — Dante Alighieri

So I sent Halt to straighten matters out. Thought it might be a good idea to give him something to keep him busy."
So what's Digby got to complain about?" Rodney asked. It was obvious from his tone that he felt no sympathy for the recalcitrant commander of Barga Hold.
The Baron gestured for Lady Pauline to explain.
Apparently," she said,"Halt threw him into the moat. — John Flanagan

The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry. — Shirley Chisholm

They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold. — Tommy Wallach

In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat. — Charlie Munger

I wonder," she said. "Does this castle have a moat?"
A group of servants were busy emptying the privy buckets into the moat when they were startled by a sudden drawn-out cry. They looked up in time see a scarlet-and-gold clad figure sail out of a first-story window, turn over once and then land with an enormus splash in the dark, rancid waters. They shrugged and went back to work. — John Flanagan

Your mere presence makes me wish for a fifty-story window to jump out of and a cement sidewalk below. Or a moat. A moat with a dozen hungry alligators in it."
He smirked. "You always paint such lovely pictures with your words, little bird."
"I'm going to paint lovely pictures with your intestines," I shot back.
Drake laughed.
I hated him.
Seriously. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

She looked around. "Oh, I've just got to hug somebody! You!" And she hugged Puck, the little ghost horse. "And you." She hugged Pook, and Peek, and even the nose of the moat monster. "But not you," she decided, encountering the zombie. — Piers Anthony

The leopard in the zoo wanders to the edge of his pen and, through the bars or across an unjumpable moat, he stares at you with contempt for your inferiority, for needing that barrier between you. There is a shared understanding in that moment, nonverbal but no less real: the leopard is predator and you are prey, and it is only the barrier that permits us humans to feel superior and secure. That feeling, standing at the leopard's cage, is edged with shame, at the animal's superior strength, at his hauteur, his low estimation of you. — William Landay

come on mama, let's rent us a boat
sail down that gibraltar moat
shed a tear every time we pass tangier — Townes Van Zandt

The Mennonites have Dirk Willems, who was arrested for his religious beliefs in the sixteenth century and held in a prison tower. With the aid of a rope made of knotted rags, he let himself down from the window and escaped across the castle's ice-covered moat. A guard gave chase. Willems made it safely to the other side. The guard did not, falling through the ice into the freezing water, and Willems stopped, went back, and pulled his pursuer to safety. For his act of compassion, he was taken back to prison, tortured, and then burned slowly at the stake as he repeated "Oh, my Lord, my God" seventy times over.8 — Malcolm Gladwell

If you want to get to the castle, Groceries, you've got to swim the moat. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I thought a company that provides mutual-fund information could be a great business, because you could construct an effective moat by building large financial databases and customer lists and a strong brand name. — Joe Mansueto

Shame is a virus that creates paralysis in its hosts. When you're busy telling yourself what a bad person you are, you expend most of your energy obsessing over your self- not what you may have done wrong, not what you can do to fix it. For this reason, shame creates a moat around girls' potential. It limits their ability or willingness to face challenges. It makes them want to be alone, isolating them from friends, their most important buffer against stress. Shame is therefore a major threat to girls' resilience. — Rachel Simmons

How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it. — Charlie Munger

Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks. — John Burnham Schwartz

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forests. — H.P. Lovecraft

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. — William Shakespeare

Increasingly, there will be accountability to the business side, especially in the world of ad viewability. This is the awkward term for a new insistence from marketers that they'll pay up only if at least 50% of an ad is in view for at least one continuous second. In that scenario, reading versus browsing is critical because it means ads on a post will be seen, pushing up click-throughs and ad rates. I suggested Super Journalists would get paid for hitting certain time-spent metrics. Well, for one post anyway, I hit a few super numbers tracked by Moat. After about 1,000 views, my average active dwell time (that is, time spent reading) was — Anonymous

I don't buy into that whole concept of success that I have this mountain with this moat around it and then I get into my big car and drive to my destination and never see people. That's not my concept of success. — Lauryn Hill

Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What, then, is Berkshire's moat? The answer: Berkshire's distinctive corporate culture. Berkshire spent the last five decades acquiring a group of wholly owned subsidiaries of bewildering variety but united by a set of distinctive core values. The result is a corporate culture unlike any other. And this is Berkshire's moat. — Lawrence A. Cunningham

He'd imprisoned himself in this castle to rot. He'd cut off all contact with the outside world. And just when he thought he'd burned all his bridges, this woman - this impossible, sweet, foolish woman - arrived, determined to swim the moat. Breach his defenses. Make a home. Stay. — Tessa Dare

Since social relationships are always ambiguous, since my thought is only a unit, since my thoughts create rifts as much as they unite, since my words establish contacts by being spoken and create isolation by remaining unspoken, since an immense moat separates the subjective certitude that I have for myself from the objective reality that I represent to others, since I never stop finding myself guilty even though I feel I am innocent ... — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I live in a house that was built in 1480. It has a moat around it. It is like a little baby castle. — Bill Wyman

The Saracens surrendered to Richard. And he had every last one of them beheaded. There was a hill of heads, a hill that grew gradually out of the moat and spilled on to the plain.' Liam looked down at a potato bobbing in his soup and all of a sudden felt a little less hungry. — Alex Scarrow

unless a company has some kind of economic moat, predicting how much shareholder value it will create in the future is pretty much a crapshoot, regardless of what the historical track record looks like. Looking at the numbers is a start, but it's only a start. Thinking carefully about the strength of the company's competitive advantage, and how it will (or won't) be able to keep the competition at bay, is a critical next step. — Pat Dorsey

I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions. — Tim Berners-Lee

If I wish to engage, then the enemy, for all his high ramparts and deep moat, cannot avoid engagement; I attack that which he is obliged to rescue. — Sun Tzu

No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats. — Warren Buffett

I adore a moat,' said Isabel. 'Good-bye. — Henry James

The Ferryman will transport us across the moat," Chris informed.
"Yeah. This seems legit," Gabriella quipped as Chris helped her onto the boat. Andrew followed behind.
"Are you sure this isn't a trick?" Egnatious asked.
Again, uncertainty filtered into Chris's blue eyes, but he nodded anyway. "This is the only way. — Laura Kreitzer

I try to avoid Politico to spare myself psoriasis of the brain but so many journalists cite it that I'm forced to be aware of it no matter how big a moat I build. — James Wolcott

I want a big house with a moat and dragons and a fort to keep people out. — Victoria Beckham

in this you have failed
you have invalidated your dysfunctional efforts
of innocence
of perverted virginity
with a mangy face before the eye of God
not even summations of crawling
not even rust cutters or combustion
as if to test your blue vaginal mirrors
inside a Protestant Crimea
listening to your fallacious absorption neurosis

you've forfeited your flames
you've cast into the moat
salacious bonfire bathing
you've given up the power of deepened torturing rums
of magnetic chromosomal nerves
for a weakly neutered clairaudience of failure — Will Alexander

He remembered that, after digging for a little, the water oozes round your finger-tips; the hole then becomes a moat; a well; a spring; a secret channel to the sea. — Virginia Woolf

I can't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe it." "Neither can I," Jessica said, eyeballing the door. "And if you'll just let me by, I'll go get some help - " "Oh," Abigail said, with another laugh, "you're perfectly safe. I'm not crazy." She held out her hand. "Abigail Moira Garrett de Piaget. Local girl from Freezing Bluff, Michigan. Nice to meet you." Jessica felt her jaw slip down to land with a figurative thud on her chest. "You're kidding." Abigail pulled her hand back and hugged herself, still laughing in a gasping kind of way. "Oh, honey, you just don't know the half of it." Jessica could hardly think straight. "You're from - " "1996. Fell into a pond and resurfaced in Miles's moat in 1248. It's a wonder he took me in with the way I smelled." "Then you're from - " "Michigan. And what I wouldn't give for a York peppermint patty about now. — Lynn Kurland

You can have the most advanced and efflorescent cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933 ... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns. — Charles Krauthammer

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all. The boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished into the bigger drifts. There was skating on the moat, which roared with the gliding bones which they used for skates, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector's face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening, — T.H. White

Long distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated people from workers on the other side of the world. But every day, technology narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of becoming both a coworker and a competitor to every one of us ... Technological change is going to reach out and sooner or later change something fundamental in your business world. — Andy Grove

The older Kit gets, the less confident he feels judging other people as spouses or parents. These days, driving past the home of the Naked Hemp Society, he finds himself more curious than contemptuous about their easily ridiculed New Age ways. Why shouldn't they nurse their babies till age four? Why shouldn't they want to keep their children away from factory-farmed meats, from clothing soaked in fire-retardant chemicals, from dull-witted burned-out public school teachers whose tenure is all too easily approved? Why not frolic naked in the sprinkler
under the full moon, perhaps? Why not turn one's family into a small nurturing country protected by a virtual moat? — Julia Glass

Katherine and the children have made paper boats and are floating them on the moat to see which one stays up the longest, contriving always that Edward's should be the winner. He is learning from an early age that the world conspires magically to favor him. After all, he will be King one day and that is the way of things for kings. — Elizabeth Fremantle

As far as size goes, to gain access to the complex we're going to cross the 623 foot moat, using the stone causeway. Once across we simply need to search the 203 acres of land and temple for any sign of what we may be looking for. — Vincent Pauletti

Reflections of the battlements shimmered in the deep green moat, casting an image of enduring strength, an image that defied the very siege of time. — Karen Azinger

The smartest thing you can do in this business is get connected with a great agent to help you. Get connected with people who will form a family around you, or a moat. — Kim Basinger

An oracle must cross the moat of logic and reach the inner poet that resides, perhaps repressed but nonetheless alive, within all of us. The I Ching helps us tune into our feeling consciousness through imagery and metaphor, and this, we find, is the path of clarity, of both strength and tolerance, of gentle humor, and of love. — Carol K. Anthony

Love is the castle, doubt is the moat, desire is the paddle and hope is the boat. — Kellie Elmore

To the question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other answer but this, Look to your Moat. — George Savile, 1st Marquess Of Halifax

Do you understand the plan?"
They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed. "What's that wobbly thing?" he said. "Is it a tree?"
"Those are the gates," Jace said.
"Ohh," said Isabelle, pleased. "So what are the swirly bits? Is there a moat?
"Those are trajectory lines - Honestly, am I the only person who's ever seen a strategy map?", Jace demanded, throwing his stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. "Do you understand anything I just said."
"No," Clary said. "Your strategy is probably awesome, but your drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and the fortress looks like a frog. — Cassandra Clare

When I was five, we moved to Virginia and lived inside an old fort that was surrounded by a moat. So when I heard stories of American history, I felt as if those dramas were taking place right in my own backyard. — Mary Pope Osborne

He was terrified (his word) of us becoming "isolated." What alarmed me is that his idea of isolated was much closer to my concept of ideal. If we lived on a great expanse of land, Dennis would want a grand swimming pool so that we could invite all our friends over for long, leisurely weekends. Whereas I would want a moat filled with saltwater crocodiles to keep the riffraff out. * — Augusten Burroughs

During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again. — Ben Shapiro

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:
The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,
Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like
dolphins through the grey sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this
dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this
is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars. — Robinson Jeffers

My love life couldn't be more nonexistent if Julius was all all-girls' boarding school with a moat full of alligators around it. — Flynn Meaney