Quotes & Sayings About Rowing

Americans generally associate boats with leisure. Vastly less prosperous, Egyptians associate them with nothing but labour. Rowing a boat is something a fisherman is forced to do to make a living; how could such an activity bring me - a woman no less - pleasure? — Rosemary Mahoney

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

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

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.
- Chinese proverb — Alvin Toffler

This book has the best quote describing the feeling of getting drunk. "I was starting to get drunk now, and I was clinging with my fingertips to the last vestige of decorum. Soon, however, I knew there would come that moment when, without anyone's bidding, I would slip through a crack in the floorboards and find myself rowing across the River Styx with my demon entourage, and not until morning would I fully be able to assess the consequences". Perfect. — Rex Pickett

I met a solid rowing friend and asked about the Race. "How fared it with the wind," I said, "When stroke increased the pace? You swung it forward mightily, you heaved it greatly back. "Your muscles rose in knotted lumps, I almost heard the crack. "And while we roared and rattled too, your eyes were fixed like glue. "What thoughtwent flying through your mind, how fared it, Five, with you?" But Five made answer solemnly, "I heard them fire a gun, "No other mortal thing I heard until the Race was done." — R. C. Lehmann

I'd say it was a pleasure rowing with you, only it wasn't. — Jennifer McKeithen

Harmony, balance, and rhythm. They're the three things that stay with you your whole life. Without them civilization is out of whack. And that's why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That's what he gets from rowing. — Daniel James Brown

Your best compound exercises are squats, front squats, deadlifts, Trap Bar deadlifts, standing presses with barbells or dumbbells (or a single dumbbell), barbell and dumbbell bent-over rowing, pull-ups, chin-ups, pull-downs, weighted push-ups, bench presses (performed with barbells, dumbbells, or a single dumbbell), incline presses (performed with barbells, dumbbells, or a single dumbbell), shoulder shrugs (performed with a barbell, two dumbbells, one dumbbell or a Trap Bar), deadlifts from the knees (performed with the bar or Trap Bar elevated by resting the plates on sturdy wooden blocks), hand and thigh lifts, and Hise shrugs. (Many would add dips to the list; I don't because they're hard on the shoulders and can cause shoulder problems for many trainees, particularly older trainees. — Brooks D. Kubik

Bad habits are like having a sumo wrestler in the back of your canoe rowing the opposite direction. — J. Loren Norris

Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important. — Roz Savage

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream. — Owen Feltham

Rowing against the tide is hard and uncertain. To go with the tide and thus take advantage of the workings of the great natural force is safe and easy. — Ralph Waldo Trine

There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing — Barry S. Strauss

SIR BARNET and Lady Skettles, very good people, resided in a pretty villa at Fulham, on the banks of the Thames; which was one of the most desirable residences in the world when a rowing-match happened to be going past, but had its little inconveniences at other times, among which may be enumerated the occasional appearance of the river in the drawing-room, and the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn and shrubbery. — Charles Dickens

If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie. — Barry S. Strauss

If you want to know why you didn't make a boat
I'll tell you. You're just out there hammering the water. You're killing fish, not rowing. — Jim Dietz

All my life I've been rowing against the tide. What can I do? It seems I was born that way. — Jose Mujica

I went to university (Brown), I worked as a designer, I competed in Olympic sport (rowing) ... and I ended up being a musician. It's in the DNA, I guess. — Dhani Harrison

you're rowing by wordlight — Paul Celan

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

To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward ... — Theodore Roethke

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

Aelin Galathynius said quietly, "You never stop seeing their faces."
It was only when they were rowing for the shore, spindrift soaking them, that Manon realized the queen hadn't meant the Thirteen. And Manon wondered if Aelin, too, had watched that cloak floating out to sea and thought it looked like spilled blood. — Sarah J. Maas

Unlike boxers-or any professional athlete for that matter-rowers have little motivation to do it longer than necessary. With a modest amount of self-realization, you'll know when you have acquired the nebulous gifts that rowing has to offer, whether it's courage or a strengthened soul or a powerful body. Once you have it, drop back ten yards and punt. Someone new will pick up the ball and run with it. — Brad Alan Lewis

Rowing provided a place to go, a community where people cared about what I did and what I achieved. — Nancy Greene

I found my mind wandering at games; loved boxing and was good at it; and in summer, having chosen rowing instead of cricket, lay peacefully by the Stour, well upstream of the rhythmic creaking and the exhortation, reading Lily Christine and Gibbon and gossiping with kindred lotus-eaters under the willow-branches. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

Trouble was, everyone always made talking out a problem sound like it was so simple and solved everything, but actually doing it, and securing the desired outcome without screwing up, seemed about as easy as rowing upriver with a teaspoon. — Babette James

As I stood in the booth chatting to people, it occurred to me that besides good racing, the Crew Classic provided an ideal setting for the brotherhood of rowing. The brotherhood connects real rowing people. Teammates who haven't visited in years came together, and so do former opponents who once battled like mortal enemies. Suddenly they discovered they have much more in common. Long live the brotherhood of rowing. — Brad Alan Lewis

I confess ... that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very vast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue. — T. S. Eliot

I climbed on the rowing ergometer, and started to pull - losing myself in the rhythm of sweat and pain. — Stefan Kieszling

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time. — Patrick Lencioni

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

Rowing is an absurdly simple sport. I can easily guide a beginner throught the right technical motions. The difficulty arises when the beginner attempts to repeat those motions on a bumpy race course, at 40 strokes a minute, with his heart rate zooming, and an opponent charging up his stern. — Brad Alan Lewis

Be not afraid of rowing slowly. Be afraid of standing still. — Hannah Whitall Smith

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. — John Masefield

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Satan may win some present battles, but the outcome of the war has already been determined - and Satan knows it. When we know that truth as well, it gives us courage to persevere through the downturns. Like castaways who keep on rowing because the map shows an island ahead, we'll have the courage to press on. Perhaps this is the reason the devil tries to discourage people from reading this amazing book. The devil has turned thousands of people away from this portion of God's Word. He does not want anyone to — David Jeremiah

In rowing, you're always striving for that perfect stroke, that repetition, each one being as good as the last. Same thing with cooking. You can't say, 'Oh, I don't feel well, so I'm going to put out a crappy plate.' — Bryan Volpenhein

Like any good drug, anger can mask all reality. But anger is not an easy emotion to call up on demand, which is why an enemy is so wonderful. You're tired. Didn't sleep well. You have zero energy. Then you get lucky. You pull into the boathouse parking lot and see your favorite enemy. Celebrate. Your workout is saved. One look at that chowderhead can put you into the angerzone. As you turn off your car, you can feel your whole physical being change. Respiration increases. The dull look on your face is magically transformed into the power-stare of a true rowing warriot. — Brad Alan Lewis

Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining. — Barry S. Strauss

Rowing is a simple sport stuffed up by experts — Roger Moore

Go out there and row faster. — Roger Moore

In rowing as in life, there are competitors and there are racers. The competitor works hard and rows to his limit. The racer does not think of limits, only the race. — Jim Dietz

In terms of pure physical effort, today was probably as hard as I've worked in any part. I spent the morning rowing, including the change of speeds Arrius [the Roman commander] test Judah with. A real bone-breaker. — Charlton Heston

"Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we're in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!" (modified from a passage in Roz Savage's "Rowing the Atlantic") — Roz Savage

Once, while talking to a group at a dinner party that included Larry Ellison, Amelio tried to put his company's problems in perspective for the other guests. "Apple is a boat," he said. "There's a hole in the boat, and it's taking on water. But there's also a treasure on board. And the problem is, everyone on board is rowing in different directions, so the boat is just standing still. My job is to get everyone rowing in the same direction." After Amelio walked away, Ellison turned to the person standing next to him and asked, "But what about the hole?" That was one story Steve never got tired of telling. — Brent Schlender

Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. — Kenichi Ohmae

and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat insdie me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it — Anne Sexton

Maybe the future is like rowing for shore. Your only choice is to try or give up. — Kristen Chandler

Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race - the Olympic standard - takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes. A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman — Daniel James Brown

Race for the pschological advantage. Sit up tall, pull in high, stay within the margins of power, and they will inevitably look over at some point to see what kind of God is blasting your boat forward. — Christopher Allsopp

One of the unique aspects of rowing is that novices strive to perfect the same motions as Olympic contenders. Few other sports can make this claim. In figure skating, for instance, the novice practices only simple moves. After years of training, the skater then proceeds to the jumps and spins that make up an elite skater's program. But the novice rower, from day one, strives to duplicate a motion that he'll still be doing on the day of the Olympic finals. — Brad Alan Lewis

[G]rowing into your future with health and grace and beauty doesn't have to take all your time. It rather requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is. (267-268) — Victoria Moran

Nobody Beats Us! served as our main trigger ... We practiced using trigger words, private verbal keys, which unlocked certain thoughts for us. We had a half-dozen phrases-some dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with our stroke rating. The most powerful phrase was 'Nobody Beats Us!' According to our plan, when I said these words to Paul toward the end of the race, we would immediately shift into our final sprint, rowing as high and hard as possible, straight through, until we crossed the finish line. — Brad Alan Lewis

The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing. — Barry S. Strauss

It was toward the middle part of their relationship, though neither she nor Vohannes knew it then. She had found him sitting beneath a tree, watching the rowing team practicing in the Khamarda River, next to the academy. The girls' team had just set their shell in the water and was climbing in. When Shara joined him and sat in his lap, as she often did, she felt a soft lump pressing into her lower back. — Robert Jackson Bennett

[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic ... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings. — V.S. Pritchett

Not everyone wants this conventional little life you're rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire. And when it's time for me to go I fully intend to roll off my one-person dinghy into the flames and be consumed. I'm not afraid. — Zadie Smith

Now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing ... — Anne Sexton

There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction they are going! There's no knowing where they're rowing, Or which way the river's flowing! Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, For the rowers keep on rowing, And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. . . . — Roald Dahl

I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave. — Madame De Stael

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the — Daniel James Brown

It's great to see the World Rowing Championships returning to U.S. soil for the first time in 25 years. I am even more excited that it will be taking place in my home state of Florida. Regardless of where my rowing career takes me, I am sure to be in attendance in Sarasota in 2017. — Stephen Young

Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right. — Barry S. Strauss

Poetry invades loneliness in a way that nothing else can. I thought that if I changed that people, beautiful people, arrogant people, narcissists, intellectuals, readers, teachers, spiritual gurus would come into my life but they did not. I am still rowing my boat ashore. It still feels like Hiroshima out there. — Abigail George

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain. — Brad Alan Lewis

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

I think I have experience in rowing, and that has given me some ability to go about racing. I'm lucky genetically. I have a good VO2 max - I can hold a lot of air in my lungs - and that definitely helps. — Bryan Volpenhein

A man goes through many changes in 2000 meters. Some are not very pretty. Some make you hate yourself. Some make you wonder if you've been rowing for only three or four days. To avoid that fate, we prepared for all possibilities. If a meteor landed 10 feet off our stern, we would not blink. [We] Would be aware, yet impassive, to the outside world. Every ounce of energy would be funneled into the water, and not wasted by looking around, worrying about opponents, wondering about things that didn't concern our primary goal-to be the first across the finish line. — Brad Alan Lewis

Rowing, particularly sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time. — David Halberstam

The biggest and first obstacle any artist faces is not believing they can do something. You have the talent. Just believe you are capable of doing it, because you are. Writing anything, for anyone, regardless of expertise, is like crossing the Atlantic in a canoe. What you are doing is saying "I don't know how to row". Start rowing, you will get there. Just know it will take time and perseverance, but you will get there! — Aaron Denius Garcia

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. — Mary Oliver

Gentlemen, let's go row! — Robert A. Heinlein

Mileage makes champions — Steve Fairbairn

This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket. — Tori Amos

When I was young, I read everything I could lay my hands on, but the Scots in my storybooks spent their time fighting glorious battles, rowing across lochs, or escaping over moors of purple heather. Even those Scots were hard to find. For at school, we recited poetry according to the set texts the teachers taught us. — Theresa Breslin

I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing new. — Fanny Kemble

Before big bridges, deep tunnels and the advent of health and safety regulations, there were many ways to cross rivers. They would use rowing boats, rickety rafts or in the absence of a vessel, swim or wade. Everyone knew what a stepping-stone was. They all understood that it was not something that you would want to stand on for any length of time. It was a means to an end, an important point and a route from A to B. — Johnathan Cainer

You alone are responsible — Mike Livingston

Pocock paused and stepped back from the frame of the shell and put his hands on his hips, carefully studying the work he had so far done. He said for him the craft of building a boat was like religion. It wasn't enough to master the technical details of it. You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart. He turned to Joe. "Rowing," he said, "is like that. And a lot of life is like that too, the parts that really matter anyway. Do you know what I mean, Joe? — Daniel James Brown

To hell with that. If a guy can pull a big erg, I can teach him how to row. — Mike Teti

That evening, rowing on the quiet river as sunset turned to dusk, I saw an occasional smoky smudge on the towpath, always slightly ahead of me, like a dark star guiding me home. — Deborah Harkness

The GLORY is in the TEAM, NOT the INDIVIDUAL. — Sean Sullivan

Competition in rowing doesn't just come from other countries. It comes from Wall Street, med school, law school. You think Harvard and Princeton grads want to live in Chula Vista? — Mike Teti

The result of all this muscular effort, on both the larger scale and the smaller, is that your body burns calories and consumes oxygen at a rate that is unmatched in almost any other human endeavor. Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race - the Olympic standard - takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes. — Daniel James Brown

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins. — Barry S. Strauss

On a long sea voyage the rowers of Carib merchant canoes kept a small brazier of coals going amidships. Every 30 minutes or so, a small wad of tobacco leaves was placed on the brazier and, as the smoke began to rise, the rowers would put a forked nose pipe made from the breastbone of a seabird into the fumes and draw them in. After holding the smoke for awhile, a rower would exhale powerfully with a shout like high school players breaking a football huddle and then go back to the awesome task of single-handedly rowing a fully loaded commercial canoe over the open seas. — Bill Drake

I have come to the conclusion that rowing alone won't bring top of the line erg scores. The two are really completely different. The motion is, of course, fairly similar to rowing. However moving your own body back and foth on a machine that doesn't move is a challenge that cannot be mastered unless it is trained. Therefore, I believe that people who only row will find it harder to pull scores on the erg that are in the highest percentile. — Xeno Muller

Let the boat work - and not me! — Phillip Thomas

I think that's why I coach.. I used to get up early every morning with a clear goal in mind of how fast I was going to be. When I stopped rowing, there was a void in my daily routine. Now I go to bed at night and get up morning with a clear goal in mind of how fast you are going to be. — Christopher Allsopp

He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in the god damn boat, he'd want to know who the guy that was rowing it before he'd even get in. — J.D. Salinger

Once one has attained a high level of success at any pursuit and especially an unorthodox pursuit like rowing, one develops a number of generally self-congratulatory half-truths to explain how it happened that he ascended to that particular pinnacle. Often because original motivations don't seem to have much in common with the eventual success, the real and rationalized motivations are difficult to separate. — Stefan Kieszling

The ship is going by a mighty engine, and you are busy rowing. — Mooji

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing. — Herman Melville

When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I stopped rowing for a moment to glug down some water, but it was warm, tasted of plastic, and failed to refresh. I yearned for an ice-cold drink - preferably one with bubbles and alcohol in it. — Roz Savage

At this time of day it should have been open and full of fifty fellow smackheads, crackheads, psychotics, epileptics, schizophrenics, self-harmers, beggars, buskers, car thieves, sherry pushers, ciderheads, just-released-that-morning convicts, ex-army, ex-married-men-with-young-children-who'd-discovered-their-wife-in-bed-with-two-members-of-the-university-rowing-team-at-the-same-time. — Alexander Masters

Go out there and thrill me. — Roger Moore