River Flooding Quotes & Sayings

I believe that the federal government, like a raging river, has expanded upon the barriers and the boundaries of its banks, and unfortunately, it is flooding all of America with its encroachment. — Steve Southerland

A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for hourse and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory
what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our "flooding. — Toni Morrison

When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river's reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat. — Alexander Blok

The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north. — Edwin Way Teale

God must be a smell, one of those delicious dreamy aromas that float into the soul on the warm hopeful days of spring. What is God must be one of those smells that beguile and inebriate the mind, who like a fine drunken horse of water the heart now rides, galloping wild in every direction like a river flooding right through the topsoil of your youth, cutting and eroding a groove that will be your life, a canyon sunk deep into the virgin plains and unsawn forests of your early days. — Martin Prechtel

My love and I are inventing a country, which we can already see taking shape, as if wheels were passing through yellow mud. But there is a problem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw and begin flooding. If we put the river on the border, there will be trouble. If we forget about the river, there will be now way out. There is already a sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke. Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can never erase. — Larry Levis

The morning sun burned away the mist so the valley below is now clear. The scope of what I see drowns out every other sense: There's no river, no water. Instead, hundreds of feet below the bridge the ground shifts and writhes. At first I think maybe it's a field of some sort but then individual colors begin to pull apart.
And all at once I understand what it is. Like a river flooding its banks, the entire valley is full of Mudo. The sound is not that of a raging waterfall but the pounding of two hundred million feet. The moans of a hundred million mouths. They pour through the valley, more people than I have ever seen. More people than I ever thought could have existed in one world. And they sense me, reach for me but are trapped by the mountains. — Carrie Ryan

We've also evolved the ability to simply 'pay it forward': I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. 'When I am older,' said the boy to his father, 'I will carry you across this river as you now do for me.' 'No, you won't,' said the father stoically. 'When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you.' Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism
to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not. — Greg M. Epstein

Memories of the past year came tumbling down on me. The recent changes and reverses were almost overwhelming. I was learning that life flowed like a river. When the run-off was normal, the water ran smoothly. But if there came a downpour, it gushed. In the likeness to a flooding river, life events were caught up in the course of the devouring stream. — Mary Margaret Jensen