Quotes & Sayings About Oars

Listen, last time I talked to you three, you were all two oars short of having any oars, so I don't want to hear it. — James Riley

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The clockwork men and women fated to maneuver the oars twenty-four hours per day until the ship reached its destination had turned their silent voices to song as they bent their backs to row. They sang not in any human language but in the secret language of the mechanicals. A shanty sung in the click-tick-click of clockwork bodies, the crash of tapped feet, the clatter of metal hands gripping banded wooden spars. — Ian Tregillis

Most people are rowing against the current of life. Instead of turning the boat around, all they need to do is let go of the oars. — Esther Hicks

The oars game me power but also taught me humility. — Barry S. Strauss

Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then: - softly, softly! That's it - that's it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull? - pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here," whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it - that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her - start her, my silverspoons! Start her, marling-spikes!" Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. — Herman Melville

When life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars. — Robert Breault

The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again. — Leo Tolstoy

Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ. — Charles Spurgeon

Nervous?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the steady slice of his oars through the calm bay.
"No," she lied.
"Me too. — Sarah J. Maas

Sometimes it is really hard to sit in the single and go for a row. I think this is really normal. I, like probably a lot of people, burn out every once in a while. What I have learned from my own experience is that there are two reasons for it to happen. It is that I am either physically tired or mentally tired. If either of these are the case, the wisest decision is to blow off practice. Blowing off practice is healthy. I didn't understand that until I was so burnt out that I wanted to make scrap material out of my single and my oars. — Xeno Muller

By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the
light chariot, and establish love.
[Lat., Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur;
Arte levis currus, arte regendus Amor.] — Ovid

There was nothing I could do.
She's a riptide.
I'm just a man without oars. — Karina Halle

Seems to me," said Cap'n Bill, as he sat beside Trot under the big acacia tree, looking out over the blue ocean, "seems to me, Trot, as how the more we know, the more we find we don't know." "I can't quite make that out, Cap'n Bill," answered the little girl in a serious voice, after a moment's thought, during which her eyes followed those of the old sailor-man across the glassy surface of the sea. "Seems to me that all we learn is jus' so much gained." "I know; it looks that way at first sight," said the sailor, nodding his head; "but those as knows the least have a habit of thinkin' they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr'ble big world this is. It's the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain't long enough to git more'n a few dips o' the oars of knowledge. — L. Frank Baum

Then on the River I saw the dream-built ship of the god Yoharneth-Lehai, whose great prow lifted grey into the air above the River of Silence. Her timbers were olden dreams dreamed long ago, and poets' fancies made her tall, straight masts, and her rigging was wrought out of the people's hopes. Upon her deck were rowers with dream-made oars, and the rowers were the people of men's fancies, and princes of old story and people who had died, and people who had never been. — Lord Dunsany

We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people
leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

For Alwyn's grandfather, who was known as "the greatest talker in the country," used words which no one else understood, words which he did not understand, and words which do not exist, to swell a passionate theme, to confound his neighbors in an argument, and for their own sake. He would say, for example, "My farm was the very apocalypse of fertility, but the renter has rested on his oars till it is good for nothing," or "Manifest the bounty to pass the salt shaker in my direction." Something of the Bible, something of an Irish inheritance, something of a liar's anxiety, made of his most ordinary remark a strange and wearisome oratory. — Glenway Wescott

Delilah Bard had a way of finding trouble. She'd always thought it was better than letting trouble find her, but floating in the ocean in a two-person skiff with no oars, no view of land, and no real resources save the ropes binding her wrists, she was beginning to reconsider. The — V.E Schwab

I started rowing in December 1995. The place was Association Nautique Faontainbleau in France. A friend of mine from middle school told me that I should join him 3 times a week for rowing because my hands were so big that I would'nt require oars to row. — Xeno Muller

Don't want to slump over the oars. — James Genn

from "The Unquarried Blue of Those Depths Is All But Blinding,"

There are some things we just don't talk about -
Not even in the morning, when we're waking,
When your calloused fingers tentatively walk
The slope of my waist:
How love's a rust-worn boat,
Abandoned at the dock - and who could doubt
Waves lick their teeth, eyeing its hull? We're taking
Our wreckage as a promise, so we don't talk.
We wet the tired oars, tide drawing us out. — Ashley Anna McHugh

The feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying, as if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon. — Barry S. Strauss

Certain anthropologists hold that man, having discovered tools, ceased to evolve biologically. Animals, never having discovered them, continue to fashion drills out of their beaks, oars out of their hind feet, wings out of their forefeet, suits of armor out of their hides, levers out of their horns, saws out of their teeth. Whether this be true or not, all authorities agree that man is the tool-using animal. It sets him off from the rest of the animal kingdom as drastically as does speech. — Stuart Chase

One win is not enough to rest on our oars especially where there is room and opportunity for other wins and successes. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

Not all who demand your attention desire your happiness, many merely seeking a conveyance to their own. It is entirely easy when wrapped up with the petty to miss what is possible and what rows your ship to worthwhile dreams. But when two or more fall together to share the oars of what might be, dreams may find them in equal measure and as fast as the wake made. — Tom Althouse

A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars. — Garrison Keillor

All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretence Our wanderings to guide. — Lewis Carroll

How often have I watched, and longed to imitate when I should be free to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay flat on his back in the bottom of the boat, letting it drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky gliding slowly by above him, his face aglow with a foretaste of happiness and peace! — Marcel Proust

From the Sun I learned this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no safe," Kaz snarled. "Not in the Barrel. Not anywhere." He threw his strength into rowing. No seal. No ship. Their money spent.
"What do we do now?" Wylan said quietly, his voice barely audible above the sound of the water and the other boats on the canal.
"Pick up a pair of oars and make yourself useful," said Kaz. "Or I'll put your pampered ass in the drink and let your father fish you out. — Leigh Bardugo

And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it ... — E. Nesbit

What's happening, Dad?" "Shut up and row! Get us away from it!" "Is it a monster, Dad?" "It's worse than a monster, son!" shouted Solid, as the oars bit into the water. The thing was quite high now, standing on some kind of tower ... "What is it, Dad! What is it?" "It's a damned weathercock! — Terry Pratchett

The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting. — Neal Stephenson

The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream And greedily devour the treacherous bait. — William Shakespeare

As Einstein himself pointed out. He said we're like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can't see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it's there. — Jack Finney

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. — Terry Pratchett

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written. — Friedrich Nietzsche

ferryman's hefty Africans pace short reciprocating arcs on the deck, sweeping and shoveling the black water of the Charles Basin with long stanchion-mounted oars, minting systems of vortices that fall to aft, flailing about one another, tracing out fading and flattening conic sections that Sir Isaac could probably work out in his head. The Hypothesis of Vortices is pressed with many difficulties. The sky's a matted reticule of taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks. Gusts make the anchored ships start and jostle like nervous horses hearing distant guns. — Neal Stephenson

We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals. — John F. Kennedy

Shandy looked ahead. Blackbeard, apparently willing to get the explanation later, had picked up his oars and was rowing again.
'May I presume to suggest,' yelled Shandy giddily to Davies,
'that we preoceed the hell out of here with all due haste.'
Davies pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead and sat down on the rower's thwart. 'My dear fellow consider it done. — Tim Powers

You have sea, you have boat, you have oars, and then why on earth you are rotting in the port? — Mehmet Murat Ildan

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw benieath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg. — Herman Melville

Mankind owns four things
That are no good at sea:
Rudder, anchor, oars,
And the fear of going down. — Antonio Machado

The night was as dark by this time as it would be until morning; and what light we had, seemed to come from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars. — Charles Dickens

When you are rowing well and hard, the rhythm of the stroke takes over. It drives your days and restores your nights. It imparts cadence and direction. You feel like you and the boats are one, you feel that no obstacle will put up any more resistance than the water does to your oars, you feel that hard work and grit and mental toughness will always win it for you in the end. — Barry S. Strauss

It didn't make much sense to me then, what Gnut was going through, but after Pila and me had our little twins, and we put a family together, I got an understanding of how terrible love can be. You wish you hated those people, your wife and children, because you know the things the world will do to them, because you have done some of those things yourself. It's crazy-making, yet you cling to them with everything and close your eyes against the rest of it. But still you wake up late at night and lie there listening for the creak and splash of oars, the clank of steel, the sounds of men rowing toward your home. — Wells Tower

Ruth Bracket's arms moved backward and forward in rhythmic motion. She was rowing, yet no sound came from her oarlocks. Oars and oarlocks were padded. She liked it best that way. Why? Mystery - that magic word "mystery." How she loved it! — Mildred A. Wirt

Mary bring out your umbrella -
The sun shines down on this fine, fine day
But the ashes raining down forever
Are going to turn your hair to gray.
Mary keep your oars a-steady
Sail away on the rising flood
Keep your candle at the ready
Red tides can't be told from blood.
- "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play — Lauren Oliver

When the winds of life don't hit your sails, you grab the oars of life and you start pushing. — Greg Plitt

I gave up trying to find out. Any knowledge I might gain was useless. I had no means of controlling where I was going - no rudder, no sails, no motor, some oars, but insufficient brawn. — Yann Martel

We can't go home," Joshua said at last. "I don't know enough yet." "No," said Gaspar, "I suspect that you don't. But you know all that you will learn here. If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat to cross and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?" "How big is the boat?" I asked. "What color is the boat?" asked Joshua. "How far is the rest of the journey?" I queried. "Is Biff there to carry the oars, or do I have to carry everything?" asked Josh. "No!" screamed Gaspar. "No, you don't take the boat along on the journey. It has been useful but now it's simply a burden. It's a parable, you cretins! — Christopher Moore

He uncovered the boat, his hands working the knots like he'd been doing it his whole life. Under the tarp was an old steel rowboat with no oars. The boat had been painted dark blue at one point, but the hull was so crusted with tar and salt it looked like one massive nautical bruise.
On the bow, the name Pax was still readable, lettered in gold. Painted eyes drooped sadly at the water level, as if the boat were about to fall asleep. On board were two benches, some steel wool, an old cooler, and a mound of frayed rope with one end tied to the mooring. At the bottom of the boat, a plastic bag and two empty Coke cans floated in several inches of scummy water.
"Behold," Frank said. "The mighty Roman navy. — Rick Riordan

Low stir of leaves and dip of oars And lapsing waves on quiet shores. — John Greenleaf Whittier

The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.' That will be useful. — Virginia Woolf

Funny weather today,' said the ferryman, bending slowly to his oars. 'In the morning you wake up to such a mist that you can't see two fathoms distance. And then about ten o'clock out comes the sun. One says to oneself "Here's spring on the way". And no sooner said than hailstorms set in for the afternoon. And now the wind's getting up, and there's going to be quite a blow, that's certain. Funny weather. — Maurice Druon

The swallow's wings popped open, but they flapped awkwardly at the sides of its body like wild oars. And then, as the bird fell with skittering wings, it gave one solid thrum. This slowed its descent, momentarily. It gave another thrum, and another, and then, as if its body remembered what it was supposed to do, the bird began to beat its wings rhythmically. The muscle memory was still within it. It was still losing ground, but it was flapping at least. — Bridget Asher

Sea of Strangers In a sea of strangers, you've longed to know me. Your life spent sailing to my shores. The arms that yearn to someday hold me, will ache beneath the heavy oars. Please take your time and take it slowly; as all you do will run its course. And nothing else can take what only - was always meant as solely yours. — Lang Leav

You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars. — Kris Kristofferson

I always envisioned myself as traveling the ocean of life in a rowboat where my mother was one oar and my father, the other. Having two good, solid oars made rowing much easier. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Never rest on your oars as a boss. If you do, the whole company starts sinking. — Lee Iacocca

Everything that we want is downstream ... And you don't have even have to turn the boat and paddle downstream, just let go of the oars, the current will carry you. — Esther Hicks

So to the lyre of Orpheus they struck with their oars, The furious water of the sea, and the surge broke into waves. Here and there the dark brine gushed with foam, Roaring terribly through the strength of the mighty men. — Barry S. Strauss

The sun flashed off the wet blades, splinters of light, then the oars dipped, were tugged, and the beast-headed boats surged, and I stared entranced. — Bernard Cornwell

Adventure stank. She boasted sixty oars, a single sail, and a long lean hull that promised speed. Small, but she might serve, Quentyn thought when he saw her, but that was before he went aboard and got a good whiff of her. — George R R Martin

I thought when I became a Christian I had nothing to do but just to lay my oars in the bottom of the boat and float along. But I soon found that I would have to go against the current. — Dwight L. Moody

A rowboat, without oars. An outboard motor. As you can sit there for years, forever, with that outboard motor, pulling again, and yet again, that rope, or cord, or wire, or whatever it is, and winding yet again, and each time, every single time, the motor, though it may give a cough or two, will fail to start, though if it starts, and when it starts, you are, at whatever speed you choose, within the engine's limits and the hazards of the course, well on your way, until it starts you are no nearer where you were going on the fifteenth try than on the first; the enterprise may last forever, and never yet quite begin. The fact seems to be, however, that unless some apparently unrelated event should intervene
a bullet, a heart attack, a cry from shore that dinner's ready, or company has come, or junior's run away
the engine will eventually start. In the meantime, though, while you have been intensely busy, it is difficult to account for how the time is spent. — Renata Adler

The ship's boards were still sticky with new resin. We leaned over the railing to wave our last farewell, the sun-warm wood pressed against our bellies. The sailors heaved up the anchor, square and chalky with barnacles, and loosened the sails. Then they took their seats at the oars that fringed the boat like eyelashes, waiting for the count. The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy. — Madeline Miller

And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept their time. — Andrew Marvell

I had no need of sails to drive me, nor oars nor wheels to push me, nor rails to give me a faster road. Air is what I wanted, that was all. Air surrounds me as water surrounds the submarine boat, and in it my propellers act like the screws of a steamer. That is how I solved the problem of aviation. That is what a balloon will never do, nor will any machine that is lighter than air. — Jules Verne

Looks like someone will have to save him," said Brother Henry without much urgency. "Oh, Hell." Bastian gathered up the hem of his habit to disrobe. "Don't leap in after him," said Brother Lionel. "He'll drag you down. Well-documented fact. Best to save someone who's already unconscious. It's dangerous otherwise." "That's soon sorted," said Brother Henry, knelt up in the boat and raised one of the oars like a club. "Oi! Clement!" The drowning sacristan glanced upwards and Brother Henry struck downwards. — Heide Goody

Once they got there, it wasn't a pretty landing. With the oars damaged and the foresail torn, Leo could barely manage a controlled descent. The others strapped themselves in below - except for Coach Hedge, who insisted on clinging to the forward rail, yelling, "YEAH! Bring it on, lake!" Leo stood astern, alone at the helm, and aimed as best he could. Festus creaked and whirred warning signals, which were relayed through the intercom to the quarterdeck. "I know, I know," Leo said, gritting his teeth. He didn't have much time to take in the scenery. To the southeast, a city was nestled in the foothills of a mountain range, blue and purple in the afternoon shadows. A flat desert landscape spread to the south. Directly beneath them the Great Salt Lake glittered like aluminum foil, the shoreline etched with white salt marshes that reminded Leo of aerial photos of Mars. "Hang on, Coach!" he shouted. "This is going to hurt." "I was born for hurt! — Rick Riordan

Let go of the oars ... Everything you want is downstream. — Esther Hicks

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars. — Edvard Munch

The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them ... and royally squander their lives with her. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars. — Richard Halliburton

The river, tonally, does not recede, presenting the same lifeless grey near and far, a depthless plane upon which Schmitt's dragging oars inscribe parallel lines and Eakins' oars, rising and falling, leave methodically spaced patches of disturbed water. The canvas is haunting - en evocation of the democracy's idyllic, isolating spaciousness, present even in the midst of a great Eastern city. — John Updike

The children had been using these spatulas as oars, but rowing a boat is very hard work, particularly if one's traveling companions are too busy bragging to help out, and Violet was trying to think of a way they might move the boat faster. — Lemony Snicket

She seemed to see a flash of bright sunlight on dark green water, fragmented into brilliant shards by the splashing rise and fall of oars. — J.K. Rowling

I'm freezing," moaned Isabella. "I shall freeze to death."
"Cheer up, my southern flower." Jake hauled on the oars. "This was your brilliant idea. Anyway, you can die spectacularly of pneumonia, and someone will write a great tragic opera about you."
Isabella gave him a teeth-chattering grimace, but her expression turned dreamy and distant as if she was already imagining her last heart-rending aria.

Cassie cleared her throat in exasperation. "Can we not talk about spectacular deaths? — Gabriella Poole

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. Latin Proverb — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mosca had been so busy working the oars of her little plan that she had failed to see the iceberg upon which it was doomed to founder. And now here it was in front of her, a towering glacial mountain of selfishness, and she could not understand how she could have missed it. How vast was it? How far beneath the surface did it go? — Frances Hardinge

The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars. — Oliver Goldsmith

I heard word
Of bellied sailcloth,
Creak of oars,
And gold in Eastland.
Then I smelled
A smell remembered:
Salt of spray
And black-pitched boat's keel. — Frans G. Bengtsson

In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy. — Michael Dirda

I wouldn't pick you as the kind of man who'd care to die nicely."
He leant forward, lacing his hands together. "How do you think I'd like to die?"
"In a blaze of ice and fury." He was from Pirenti, after all.
The corner of his mouth hitched up at that, but it was a humourless expression, one filled with chipped edges and painted regrets. "And you?" he asked. " How would you like to die, Avery of Kaya?"
I picked up the oars and started to row.
"I'm already dead, Ambrose. — Charlotte McConaghy

The boat is tied to shore. There aren't any oars in place. She isn't going anywhere. She wears a summer dress and a garden hat. Somebody has persuaded her to pose in the boat, with water around her and dappled with shade. She is laughing. She has just been married, or is about to be married. She will never be happier. She will never be more beautiful. — Kurt Vonnegut

Instinct is a strange thing. You cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but you must trust it, and that night, as we listened to the slap of the waves and the creak of the oars, I was as certain as I could be that my fears were justified. — Bernard Cornwell

If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn't prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

When he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn't see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked - Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff's head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go. — Cynthia Voigt

But oars alone can ne'er prevail To reach the distant coast; The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost. — William Cowper

Isn't it fun,' she said and she smiled. I let the oars rest in the rowlocks. The water around the boat fell silent, and silently the cabin was floating up above the rocks and the smoke rose softly from the chimney, and how impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust. — Per Petterson

A lot of times high school felt like a shipwreck. A social shipwreck with everyone in desperate survival mode and only one lifeboat. Everyone fighting for a seat, clinging to the sides and beating each other with oars to keep their spot. I can't stand that kind of chaos, when people create drama for the sake of it. — Suanne Laqueur