River Of No Return Quotes & Sayings

There is the need for an intimate romantic relationship with the father. Abundant joy and an intimate personal receiving of God's love should be our priority because you can never get enough of this, people return again and again to swim in the river or soak in the son. — John Arnott

I receive your love and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures. But a love with no name and no explanation like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course, but simply flows onwards. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you — Paulo Coelho

All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in great array, to the lethean river ... In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re-visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies. — Virgil

By erecting thirty thousand dams of significant size across the American West, they dewatered countless rivers, wiped out millions of acres of riparian habitat, shut off many thousands of river miles of salmon habitat, silted over spawning beds, poisoned return flows with agricultural chemicals, set the plague of livestock loose on the arid land--in a nutshell they made it close to impossible for numerous native species to survive. — Marc Reisner

This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present." Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet. — Virginia Woolf

A thousand curses on you and those who spawned you! You've plagued me long enough, you stygian fiend! I don't know what sulfurous pit you've crawled out of, but I mean to return you to it! I'll send you on a voyage down the river Styx if it's the last thing I do!" Twain directed his attention back to the phone. "No, I wasn't talking to you, but most of what I said still applies. — Arthur Daigle

I hear the wind call my name
The sound that leads me home again
It sparks up the fire - a flame that still burns
To you I'll always return

I know the road is long
But where you are is home
Wherever you stay-I'll find the way
I'll run like the river-I'll follow the sun
I'll fly like an eagle
To where I belong

I can't stand the distance
I can't dream alone
I can't wait to see you-yes I'm on my way home

Now I know it's true
My every road leads to you
And in the hour of darkness,
Your light gets me through

You run like the river-you shine like the sun
Yeah
You fly like an eagle-yeah you are the one
I seen every sunset and with all that I've learned
Oh, it's to you, I will always, always, return — Bryan Adams

The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost. — Meridel Le Sueur

You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it?
How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?
The answer lies in the return.
You will not come back to the 'same old thing.
What you return to has changed because you have changed.
Your perceptions will be altered.
You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind.
The river has been flowing while you were gone.
Now it does not look like the same river. — Stephen Foster

I put the charm bracelet away in the purse and return it to my jewel case. I don't need a spell to foresee the future; I am going to make it happen. — Philippa Gregory

The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife. — Saint Francis De Sales

I am of this place. Family is a place, and my family s located here, those who are living and those who have passed. I am am settled in the scent of sage, Mount Moran's reflection at Oxbow Bend is more than a mirror of memories; it is the joy found in river otters, a reminder that there are places in the world we can return for peace unchanged. — Terry Tempest Williams

At least not until the Terror took hold of him. Not until he saw, night after night, a little boat being rowed across the river. Not until he saw it return at dawn. Not until he saw what his Untouchable son had touched. More than touched.
Enter.
Loved. — Arundhati Roy

I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming.But it is not a story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. — Bernhard Schlink

The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river. — Pat Conroy

And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present. — Hermann Hesse

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it. Feel the rush of sweetness: we make love. — Colum McCann

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

. . . This
is not the same river at my fingertips.
There are no paths, no sunken roads
familiar in the forest, by which we can
retrace our steps,
by which we can escape
by which we can reclaim and return,
or hear the child's song running in the timothy . . . — John Daniel Thieme

Fainting with heat, he suddenly found himself in the cold, cold river. He had turned into a fish. Tail, body, fins - everything was fishlike, except the head, which was his own and still ached. He swam through the muted, cool, underwater darkness and thought that now he would remain a fish forever and never go back to the moutains. "I won't return," he said to himself. "It's better to be a fish, it's better to be a fish ... — Chingiz Aitmatov

While at home his heart dwelt in the silent forests of spiritual thoughts, beating in tune with eternal Pranava-Nada (mystic sound of the Eternal) of the Jnana Ganga (river of Knowledge) within himself. The seven years at home following his return from Tirupati were marked by seclusion, service, intense study of spiritual literature, self-restraint, control of the senses, simplicity in food and dress, abandonment of all comforts and practice of austerities which augmented his inner spiritual power. — SRI SWAMI CHIDANANDA

Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain. — Gene Wolfe

Every night someone on the other side of the river would stand up and take a shot at us. We would dutifully call it in and ask for permission to return fire. The answer was always a very distinct, "NO!" Very loud and clear. — Chris Kyle

The Return of the Rivers

All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.

It is raining today
in the mountains.

It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.

Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heaves
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.

A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again. — Richard Brautigan

We laughed, then Keir took my hand. "I've something to show Lara down by the river. We will return."

Marcus put his hands on his hips. "None of that, now. There's a celebration to start, and no time for 'showing' her - "

Keir cut him off, as I blushed. "We'll be back in time."

Marcus gave him an evil smile. "I'll have the first meats waiting."

Keir grimaced, and grabbed my hand. "Come, Lara. — Elizabeth Vaughan

A few miles away across the East River was the apartment he could never get used to, the job where he had nothing to do, the dozen or so people he knew slightly and cared about not at all: a fabric of existence as blank and seamless as the freshly plaster wall he passed. Soon his wife would return from New Jersey. Soon everyone would be back, and things would go on much as they had before. From the street outside came the sound of laughter and shouting, bottles breaking, voices droning in the warm air, and children playing far past their bedtime. It all meant nothing whatever to Lowell. Standing in the parlor of a house no longer his, listening to the voices of people whose lives were closed to him forever, contemplating a future much like his past, he realized that it was finally too late for him. Everything had gone wrong, and he had succeeded at nothing, and he was never going to have any kind of life at all. — L.J. Davis

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. — Joseph Conrad

Tears are another river that takes us home. We become alive with tears. There isn't a chance to return to sleep when we are weeping. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

She tied him a fly, using a pattern she'd designed, one that had given her untold luck with those silvery fish, those fighting steelhead. She was anxious for his return.
"Does it have a name?" he said, when she gave it to him.
"The Predator." She smiled. A little embarrassed.
His eyes turned dark, and her heart beat faster. His voice dipped low. "It's a fine name."
He regarded her for several heavy, silent beats. She felt an atavistic pull, the hairs on her arms rising toward him, as if in electrical attraction. He leaned closer and her mouth turned dry. And he told her about the wild blueberries. Down by the bend in the river.
She took the lure.
She went in search of the berries.
She never came home. — Loreth Anne White

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson

Restorative niche' is Professor Little's term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls. — Susan Cain

Leaves will fall, cold will creep in
A circle of life that ends where it begins
It may take a thousand years and a thousand poems penned
But my hair will someday gray and my back will bend
Then my shadow will join my body in the earth once again.
I know not the way, or even the when
Or who chooses that day we're called away to ascend
But you bathed me in your bravery and forgave me my sins
You made a home in your heart for mine to live in
And in return, my friend, this poem is my oath that a river of love will run through it until the very end. — Ryan Winfield

Night.
The beach and the sea are in darkness.
A dog passes, going toward the sea wall.
No one walks on the boardwalk, but, on the benches lining it, people sit. They relax. Are silent. Separated from one another. They do not speak.
The traveler passes. He walks slowly, he goes in the same direction as the dog.
He stops. Returns. He seems to be out for a walk. He starts off again.
His face is no longer visible.
The sea is calm. No wind.
The traveler returns. The dog does not return. The sea begins to rise, it seems. Its sounds getting closer. Muffled thudding coming from the river's many mouths. Somber sky. — Marguerite Duras

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.
Ursula K. Leguin — Ursula K. Le Guin

He hoped her dreams were peaceful, for in a few moments she would awaken to the catastrophe that had befallen her. Could he persuade her to return home with him? Rumor had it that everything west of the river was untouched by the fire, which meant his townhouse had survived. He wanted to extend the protection of his home to Mollie. Never had he seen a woman as brave as she had been for the last thirty-six hours, and it confirmed what he had believed about her all along. She was worth fighting for, and he wanted her to be a part of his life. — Elizabeth Camden

Know the male, but hold to the female. Imagine a river flowing through a valley, never departing from its original path. Do this and you will return to a state of innocence. Perceive the bright, but hold to the dark. Like a river, let yourself flow with virtue, and set a faultless example for the world. Do this and you will return to a state of perfection. Be aware of honour, but hold to humility. Like a valley, let virtue fill you, sufficient yet everlasting. Do this and you will return to the state of the uncarved block. — Lao-Tzu

It's a toss-up whether the scenery or the adornment of Marilyn Monroe is the feature of greater attraction in River of No Return. The mountainous scenery is spectacular, but so in her own way is Miss Monroe. — Bosley Crowther

When the news of the Scottish find reached Kaniere, forty or fifty miners who had been toiling there for weeks for poor returns decided to cut their losses, buy new licences and make for Kokatahi. In the time that it took them to get to the warden's office at Hokitika and back, the Scottish strike had been talked up into a 'homeward bounder': a discovery so huge that it would change men's lives at a stroke and enable them to return home as rich men. They came up the river in pairs and groups. They — Rose Tremain

And so, as the stars came out, Miles took up his basket and made his way in the moonlight to the river, to the place where he'd hidden the little boat.
It was gone.
No great surprise, really. The region was notorious. Why shouldn't someone steal his boat? He'd return the favor and steal someone else's. Tomorrow.
Tonight, though, he wanted a proper dinner.
He set about fashioning a fishing line. — Loretta Chase