River Valley Quotes & Sayings

shortly I should be able to live at peace in my cottage, with all the twenty four hours of the day to myself. Forty-six I am, and never yet had a whole week of leisure. What will 'for ever' feel like, and can I use it all? Please note its address from March onwards - Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset - and visit it, sometime, if you still stravage the roads of England in a great car. The cottage has two rooms; one, upstairs, for music (a gramophone and records) and one downstairs for books. There is a bath, in a demi-cupboard. For food one goes a mile, to Bovington (near the Tank Corps Depot) and at sleep-time I take my great sleeping bag, embroidered MEUM, and spread it on what seems the nicest bit of floor. There is a second bag, embroidered TUUM, for guests. The cottage looks simple, outside, and does no hurt to its setting which is twenty miles of broken heath and a river valley filled with rhododendrons run wild. I think everything, inside and outside my place, approaches perfection. — T.E. Lawrence

I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called Le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows ... My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village ... Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green ... The stream doesn't have to be ours; the water doesn't have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring. — Gaston Bachelard

Literature works from mind to mind and is more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination. Should the story say 'he ate bread', the dramatic producer or painter can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says 'he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below', the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word. — J.R.R. Tolkien

No one had any objection when I suggested another detour shortly before reaching town. We turned on to a lovely road that ran high above the valley in a semi-circle , rich in extensive views over the valley, river and town, which, in the distance, was already aglow with rows of bright lamps and thousands of rosy lights. — Hermann Hesse

These bears were reimagined in place through a collective belief and need. I do not know why they were sculpted into being, but their power is palpable. I may be blind to what has been buried here or held inside these effigy mounds for thousands of years, but I can read the landscape like Braille through the tips of my fingers translating the script of grasses into a narrative I can understand. The bears and birds and snakes written on the body of the Earth through the hands of humans who dwelled here in the Upper Mississippi River Valley are a reminder that we form the future by being caretakers of our past. — Terry Tempest Williams

Sleeper in the Valley
The river sings and cuts a hole in the meadow,
madly hooking white tatters on the rushes.
light escalades the strong hills. The small
valley bubbles with sunbeams like a beerglass.
The young conscript bareheaded and open-mouthed,
his neck cooling in the blue watercress;
he's sleeping. The grass soothes his heaviness,
the sunlight is raining in his green bed,
baking away the aches of his body. He smiles,
as a sick child might smile himself asleep.
O Nature, rock him warmly, he is cold.
The fields no longer make his hot eyes weep.
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his breast lies open,
at peace. He has two red holes in his left side. — Robert Lowell

It?s a beautiful descent in a 737, into the Bitterroot Valley, following the Clark Fork River, on a perfect golden autumn day . — Garrison Keillor

If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adiron dacks, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever - think of that wonderful Hudson Valley. — Jack Kerouac

All day, after two days and nights of rain, water had been rising in the dykes and now it was creeping rapidly up the five stone arches of the bridge where the she stood watching the wide rainy valley up which the tongue of river finally lost itself in a gray country of winter elms. — H.E. Bates

Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. — Jane Austen

The Virginians of the mountains, and of the broad valley of the Shenandoah River just beyond, were a different breed. — James L. Haley

A lot of the people of the Midwest came from the Northeast. We're of the same stock. Yet something must have happened when we crossed the Ohio River Valley because I have sensed that there's more of an openness and flexibility of spirit out West. — Jane Hamilton

Any river is really the summation of the whole valley. To think of it as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part. — Hal Borland

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

It was so beautiful', he said. 'the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you've got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains ... we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvellous place it would be to come to for a holiday. however terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful. — Nevil Shute

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it. — Arthur Machen

The whisper of wind's finger tips through the steady calmness of your hair is a poetic beauty that plays with my heart and nobility of your words leaves other speeches colorless. Looking into nature, everywhere in my sight I see you. In spring, in river, in sea, in flower, in tree, in forest, in valley, in plain, in mountain. Still, I'm gaga over you that you are whole love in one body and entire desire in a cloth. — Khosro Shakibaee

Don't you know that there ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough. To keep me from getting to you, baby — Marvin Gaye

The river was the Hudson. There were carp in there and we saw them. They were as big as atomic submarines. We saw waterfalls, too, streams jumping off cliffs into the valley of the Delaware. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I didn't mean to upset you, Ms. Hamilton," his gaze shifted back to her. "It's a beautiful sight and I thought you'd like to see it." She gasped in delight at the vista before her. Distant purple mountains framed lush green meadows speckled with brown dots of cattle. A silver river threaded through clumps of trees. In the middle of the valley, ranch buildings clustered around a large white house. Elizabeth inhaled crisp air into her lungs... — Debra Holland

None of this was what held Yeva's gaze. Because in the bottom of the valley, straddling the river nestled in the foothills, was a castle. — Meagan Spooner

Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in the valley of the River Exe would be gone. The handsome agricultural landscape of which the British are so proud, carefully husbanded since Boudicca's day, would be replaced by natural growth. The most likely growth is real-estate developments. — P. J. O'Rourke

Upon Westminster Bridge
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still! — William Wordsworth

And no sooner had Cap been commanded, if she valued her safety, not to cross the water or climb the precipice than, as a natural consequence, she began to wonder what was in the valley behind the mountain and what might be in the woods across the river. And she longed, above all things, to explore and find out for herself. — E.D.E.N. Southworth

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh - but smile no more. — Edgar Allan Poe

I can only tell where I feel most at home, which is in the erosional landscape of the red rock desert of southern Utah, where the Colorado River cuts through sandstone and the geologic history of the Earth is exposed: our home in Castle Valley. — Terry Tempest Williams

Egypt is a fertile valley of rich river soil, low-lying, warm, monotonous, a slow-flowing river, and beyond the limitless desert. Greece is a country of sparse fertility and keen, cold winters, all hills and mountains sharp cut in stone, where strong men must work hard to get their bread. And while Egypt submitted and suffered and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full-face to life. For somewhere among those steep stone mountains, in little sheltered valleys where the great hills were ramparts to defend, and men could have security for peace and happy living, something quite new came into the world: the joy of life found expression. Perhaps it was born there, among the shepherds pasturing their flocks where the wild flowers made a glory on the hillside; among the sailors on a sapphire sea washing enchanted islands purple in a luminous air. — Edith Hamilton

Emerging, as we had, from the dark and gloomy bowels of the earth, the scene before us presented a view of wondrous beauty, and, while doubtless enhanced by contrast, it was nevertheless such an aspect as is seldom given to the eyes, of a Barsoomian of today to view. To me it seemed a little garden spot upon a dying world preserved from an ancient era when Barsoom was young and meteorological conditions were such as to favor the growth of vegetation that has since become extinct over practically the entire area of the planet. In this deep valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, the atmosphere doubtless was considerably denser than upon the surface of the planet above. The sun's days were reflected by the lofty escarpment, which must also hold the heat during the colder periods of night, and, in addition to this, there was ample water for irrigation which nature might easily have achieved through percolation of the waters of the river through and beneath the top soil of the valley. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go together. — John Steinbeck

But this here, the valley of sweet Virginia, this is the blissful shore. There is no more to reach for. But, humming, he knows. He knows what he believes. He believes in the strength of muscle, the pleasures of the body, the goodness of the heart. He believes in goodness, and this is a new thing, a gift to him from the river and the land and the blue light now almost black, the ink of the sky pocked with stars. This is what the valley and its waters whisper into his ear, in this evening into night. He believes at this moment, and he will always believe it, that people are good, and that he is good among them. — Robert Goolrick

When you get real big baby, remember that little old cowgirl. Waiting for you back in that red river valley. — Lana Del Rey

Across the river were two clouds in your eyes; and my kisses floated ascend from the heights of the sacred mountain -
there in the valley, where uncrowned hope of green fields and saffron came from flowers - delicate reverberations of rock walls we listened to our words of love. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

My first and lasting impression of the Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months. Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy upper-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by Ansonia standards. — John William Tuohy

And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year's withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake's two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes - who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres? — Halldor Laxness

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

The highest good is like water, for the good of water is that it nourishes everything without striving. It occupies the place which all men think bad [i.e., the lowest level].17 [102d] It is thus that Tao in the world is like a river going down the valley to the ocean.18 [102e] The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.19 [102g] How do coves and oceans become kings of a hundred rivers? Because they are good at keeping low - That is how they are kings of the hundred rivers.20 [102f] Nothing in the world is weaker than water, But it has no better in overcoming the hard.21 [101a] — Alan W. Watts

If you go searching for the Great Creator, you will come back empty-handed. The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things. — Laozi

Fort McNamara stood in the Arkansas River Valley near the Indian Territory border, its citizens declaring it to be the last white civilization for hundreds of miles. But civilization was an ironic choice of words for the place as far as Kit was concerned. — Sandra Jones

THE SALINAS VALLEY is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay. — John Steinbeck

One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land. — Chris Hadfield

God took the beauty of the Bay of Naples, the Valley of the Nile, the Swiss Alps, the Hudson River Valley, rolled them into one and made San Francisco Bay. — Fiorello H. La Guardia

The office, which had an outside entrance for ordinary visitors, was separated from the parlor by a sliding door; though Mr. Clutter occasionally shared the office with Gerald Van Vleet, a young man who assisted him with the management of the farm, it was fundamentally his retreat - an orderly sanctuary, paneled in walnut veneer, where, surrounded by weather barometers, rain charts, a pair of binoculars, he sat like a captain in his cabin, a navigator piloting River Valley's sometimes risky passage through the seasons. — Truman Capote

Few areas which are not publicly owned can boast as many footpaths as the Cuckmere Valley. For a short walk, a footbridge across the river leads back to the little hamlet of Milton Street, where another classic local pub, the Sussex Ox, provides an admirable lunch. — David Hewson

Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. — John Muir

Har-ki-doon was situated on the northeast end of the Tons River Valley in Uttaranchal, India. A stunning piece of highland at the confluence of a trio of glaciers, it displayed in every direction the magnificence of the Himalayan Mountains - — Falguni Kothari

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture. — Chang-rae Lee

In the Valley of healing dreams; beyond human imagination - there was a long quiet river. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

On the morning of what should have been Amelia Ashley's birthday, the river valley that had once housed High Bridge changed for Joshua Mayhew. For the first time in many years, it seemed beautiful to him. For the first time in many years, it was beautiful. — Tara Hudson

When they reached the top of the hill they turned and looked down at the valley. Moominhouse was just a blue dot, and the river a narrow ribbon of green: the swing they couldn't see at all. "We've never been such a long way from home before," said Moomintroll, and a little goose-fleshy thrill of excitement came over them at the thought. — Tove Jansson

That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey. — Casey Affleck

Early morning mist ghosted along the Orm, trailing above the water, rising and twisting. Wide and sleek and almost silent, the river curled through the valley, curved almost to the doors of the stone-terraced cottages sunk tight in the moorland.
As soon as he was beyond sight of the mill gates, Manny ran, his step lighter, his boots crunching against the highway. The village was quiet now, and he could hear the faint cries of sheep on the hillside. He felt suddenly exultant at having acted decisively, felt the thrill of running away. Then he reasoned with himself that he wasn't so much running away as running to something else - something better - running away to take charge of his future. He was improving his station in life, looking for work of his choosing. — S.J. Wilkins

Statistics vary, but in less than seven years there won't be a single cell left in any of our bodies that's the same as it is today. This means that any human being who 'wants' to change is like a mountain river wanting to reach the valley floor. It's a done deal; that's what mountain rivers do, and 'changing' should be our first nature. — Guy Finley

We'll ride along the river. It's a mighty pretty sight..." Puffy white clouds floated across the azure blue sky. Pine-covered mountains crowned with snowcaps folded down into foothills that ringed the valley. Beneath the clouds the play of sun and shadow cast hazy blue-green patches on the mountainsides. A distant large-winged bird rode on air currents before diving into a clump of trees. — Debra Holland

This is not our fight', the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan ... Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it. — Laurie Halse Anderson

The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it ... nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. — Mark Twain

The moment I took hold of the line, I felt the mighty tug of the wind coursing into my palm and wrist, and there I stayed, transfixed. The pwer in that topgallant sail suddenly awed me, and yet it was among the smaller sails on the mast. It was a mere speck on the ocean, catching an infinitesimal fraction of all the howling winds that crossed the wide seas. I literally could not move a muscle, trying in vain to absorb the magnitude of it.
And there was something else, as well. This wind was blowing me westward. I was hurtling into my own predestined future. With neither star nor compass, I knew the heading of this wind. It bore down on a lonely river crossing in one of the last wild places on Earth, where timber moaned in a gale, and frosty grass sparkled in the dawn, and beasts lumbered and thundered the valley. A sacred place protected by Comanches. — Mike Blakely

He'd been toting it, and checking it, and packing and unpacking, all the way since fate was on the river - that's how long - the Big River - Fate Marable and his riverboat caliope (Cleo seemed to recall), who hadastonished the landings between New Orleans and St. Louis with the wild, harsh, skirling Gypsy music, and left there, echoing in the young and restless even as it dies off round the bed; to linger with them thereafter, in the pelting roar of November midnights and the clickety-clack of lonesome valley freights, until they up one night and go after it in a battered bus, following the telephone wires that make a zigzag music staff against the evening sky - some variation of that basic beginning could be told for everyone who jazz has touched and altered. — John Clellon Holmes

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland. — Virgil

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

Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, to keep me from getting to you. — Marvin Gaye

The Tourist Office would put it back up again before somebody noticed and didn't come to Deanna for a holiday on the white sandy beaches, where they could watch little marsupial Braking Dolphins swimming backwards through the tour boats' propeller in the strong current, or to blow up Cocka Snoek in the Whatoosie River with a little help from the Skeggs Valley Dynamite Fishing Club. — Christina Engela

Every river appears to consist of a main trunk, fed from a variety of branches, each running in a valley proportional to its size, and all of them together forming a system of vallies, communicating with one another, and having such a nice adjustment of their declivities that none of them join the principal valley on too high or too low a level; a circumstance which would be infinitely improbable if each of these vallies were not the work of the stream that flows in it. — John Playfair

They rode up a trail until the trees parted and they got their first good view of Lone Peak across the valley and river. This late morning it was breathtaking. The stark peak gleamed against the deep blue of the big sky. No wonder this area had been named Big Sky. — B. J. Daniels

You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place? That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all ... fit. Be right."
"All my life, more of less"
"All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain't no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I've learned ... just to stick in the place I'm at. Just to be the man I am. — Joe Abercrombie

When the valley surrounding St. Cloud's was cleared and the second growth (scrub pine and random, unmanaged softwoods) sprang up everywhere, like swamp weed, and when there were no more logs to send downriver, from Three Mile Falls to St. Cloud's
because there were no more trees
that was when the Ramses Paper Company introduced Maine to the twentieth century by closing down the saw mill and the lumberyard along the river at St. Cloud's and moving camp downstream ... There were no Ramses Paper Company people left behind, but there were people ...
Not one of the neglected officers of the Catholic Church of St. Cloud's stayed; there were more souls to save by following the Ramses Paper Company downstream. — John Irving

When she slowly straightened, the land was vast before her. The sun was setting down the river, casting a cold pink hue along the white-capped mountains that framed both sides of the valley. Upriver, the willow shrubs and gravel bars, the spruce forests and low-lying poplar stands, swelled to the mountains in steely blue. No fields or fences, homes or roads; not a single living soul as far as she could see in any direction. Only wilderness. — Eowyn Ivey