Rushing River Quotes & Sayings

Oh my gosh, he smells good, like some exotic but comforting spice, nutmeg or cardamom. Slowly Damian lowers his head to mine and I think my chest might explode, my heart is tap-dancing so quickly.
He's going to kiss me.
I've imagined this and now it's really happening, I am like a block of wood. I can't move. I can't breathe. I close my eyes as the lightest feather of a breath , then lips, brushing over my lips. His breath is sweet and the taste of coffee barely lingers in his mouth. I feel as though my whole body has turned to liquid, into a river of millions of droplets, rushing apart and then back together.
"You have the softest lips," he whispers as he pulls back to look at me.
"So do you," I murmur. Oh, was that a stupid thing to say? I turn my face into his jacket and breathe in his scent. — Lisa Ann Sandell

Boredom reigns on all levels. The rain is a welcome change. I have seen the pond swell and the creek surge. I press my palm against the glass, imagining the drops on my skin, imagining where they started out, where they will go, feeling them like a river, rushing, combining, becoming something greater than how they started out. — Mary E. Pearson

If it had been touch, it might have been pressure-not an uncomfortable pressure, but one that swept away all the pain of her headache. Like a river rushing through her mind, clearing out everything stagnant and clotted and decayed. — L.J.Smith

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, 5
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing. — Walt Whitman

I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun warmed rock in the center of a rushing river. — Dawna Markova

She had lost just too much control, time was rushing all around her, these were rapids, and as far ahead as she could see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river, another stage, like sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into the secret that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, those those soldiered for, not yet and often never in on the secret, are always, at every age, children. — Thomas Pynchon

Remembering is my only job and it's hard work. We are natural-born amnesiacs, hardwired to let go of the past, to release ourselves from history; the only way to withstand our pain is to forget our pain. We may think we don't forget, but we do. Time wears down the rough edges of our memory, sure as a stone on the river bank is smoothed by the rushing current. And like the eroding stone, the memory fades so gradually we don't even feel it. We don't notice. Eighteen years fly by, whoosh, and we don't even realize that not long ago, we didn't all drink bottled water, the Soviet Union loomed as a threat, smoking was commonplace in restaurants, and Bono was just a rockstar.
What I want... all I want... is not to forget. But it's an uphill battle. Over time, the image blurs, the scent dissipates, the memory fades. — Greg Olear

This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet ... — Cassandra Clare

People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing river. They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather, they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and enjoy the adventure. — David Steindl-Rast

The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it.
What do you want?' it repeated.
He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not.
'Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you.
Why?'
'I wanted to meet you,' he said, without looking around. 'I want to live for ever.' His voice cracked
as he said it.
He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already
feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life.
The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several
long seconds to recognise it as laughter.
'This is not life,' said the voice.
It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard. — Neil Gaiman

Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range ... come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River ... The first little washes flashing like thick rushing winds through sheep sorrel and clover, ghost fern and nettle, sheering, cutting ... forming branches. Then, through bear-berry and salmonberry, blueberry and blackberry, the branches crashing into creeks, into streams. Finally, in the foothills, through tamarack and sugar pine, shittim bark and silver spruce - and the green and blue mosaic of Douglas fir - — Ken Kesey

Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Lend your ear then to this tutti of steeples; diffuse over the whole the buzz of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down, as with a demi-tint, all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound, and say if you know any thing in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling than that tumult of bells; than that furnace of music; than those ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high; than that city which is but one orchestra; than that symphony rushing and roaring like a tempest. — Victor Hugo

Edges
I am a child throwing rocks into the stream.
Challenging the rushing water.
Raising my fist and daring fate to do it worst.
I am a dancer in the waves of the ocean.
Swaying in time with the tide.
Pirouetting, the current my only friend.
I am the sun, rising across the canyon
Ascending, and shinning down.
Giving the illusion of perception and motion.
I am thoughts like a rolling river.
Water cascading over the rocks of my soul.
Shaping, forming, conforming.
I am the peace of the rain forest.
Basking in solitude
Tranquil, serene, transfixing angles.
Reflecting from within.
Dripping and dropping. Shaking it off.
I am the dust of the galaxy.
Yearning to know itself.
I am the wind.
Wandering. Searching.
A storm brewing from within. — Tosha Michelle

Today was not a day for the sounds of life. Today was for the hollow wind rustling branches, for the rushing of a half-frozen river, for the crunch of snow under her boots. — Sarah J. Maas

If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west. — Daniel J. Rice

There is no river in the world to be compared for majesty and the witchery of association, to the Thames; it impresses even the unreading and unimaginative watcher with a solemnity which he cannot account for, as it rolls under his feet and swirls past the buttresses of its many bridges; he may think, as he experiences the unusual effect, that it is the multiplicity of buildings which line its banks, or the crowd of sea-craft which floats upon its surface, or its own extensive spread. In reality he feels, although he cannot explain it, the countless memories which hang for ever like a spiritual fog over its rushing current.
("The Phantom Model") — Hume Nisbet

One who journeying Along a way he knows not, having crossed A place of drear extent, before him sees A river rushing swiftly toward the deep, And all its tossing current white with foam, And stops and turns, and measures back his way. — Homer

And if such a gift could come to him at such a time, then anything - dear girl from Rockford dressed up for her meeting, rushing above the Rock River - he opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone. — Elizabeth Strout

The Vicar and Miss Marcy had managed to by-pass the suffering that comes to most people - he by his religion, she by her kindness to others. And it came to me that if one does that, one is liable to miss too much along with the suffering - perhaps, in a way, life itself. Is that why Miss Marcy seems so young for her age - why the Vicar, in spite of all his cleverness, has that look of an elderly baby? I said aloud: 'I don't want to miss *anything.*' And then misery came rushing back like a river that has been dammed up. I tried to open my heart to it, to welcome it as a part of my life's experience, and at first that made it easier to bear. Then it got worse than ever before - it was physical as well as mental, my heart and ribs and shoulders and chest, even my arms, ached. — Dodie Smith

There is no fire like passion. There are no chains like hate. Illusion is a net, Desire is a rushing river. — Gautama Buddha

With so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor. — Melissa Bank

She kissed me again, and I returned it in kind, and it was a liquid, smooth thing, as restrained and desperate as the near-still surface of a rushing river. — Jim Butcher

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss. — Charles Bukowski

Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect. — Nina Easton

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, "I shall become the sea." It is not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is the truth. The river has no other alternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous fields and forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in various ways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from place to place. But it can have only partial relations with these, and however long it may linger among them it remains separate; it never can become a town or a forest. But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water has its affinity with the great motionless water of the ocean. It moves through the thousand objects on its onward course, and its motion finds its finality when it reaches the sea. — Rabindranath Tagore

The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership. — Bryce Courtenay

Tourists hurried past them on the pedestrian-only street like chickens scampering to the feeder, cars scurrying through a tollgate, Niagara River rushing into the falls. — Dennis Vickers

Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart. Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn't know it then. — Barbara Ascher

(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them
the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind
should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not. — Jerome K. Jerome

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. "Hold — Charles Dickens

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. — Mary Shelley

My eyes shifted to the trickling river. Come spring, it would be ten times as wide and just as deep. On and on it went, rushing toward the distant horizon. Like time. Like life. Sometimes gently falling from one pool into the other, other times fast and cascading, and still other times narrowing into a funnel, a torrent of knots and waves. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

Time was like water, sometimes glacial and slow (the 1720s...never again), sometimes a still pond, sometimes a gentle brook, and then a rushing river. And sometimes time was like vapor, vanishing even as you passed through it, draping everything in mist, refracting the light. That had been the 1920s. — Cassandra Clare

Salzburg ... is a mountain town with a rushing river running right through the center, everything in the rain various shades of green and brown. — Jonathan Carroll

When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of "jazz" as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity. — David Sedaris

She found a mossy hollow between the roots of a tree and, putting on her mackintosh, huddled down in her makeshift bed. She ate one sandwich and saved the others for the night, thinking that she was rather enjoying the progress of this adventure, thus far, and almost looking forward to her night in the open air. The hurry of the fast water rushing over the round pebbly rocks of the river bed was soothing: it made her feel less alone and she felt she had no need for her candle to keep the gathering darkness at bay - in fact she was rather relieved to be away from her colleagues and the instructors at Lyne Manor. — William Boyd

How many ways can we count hope? It is every breath we breathe and every beat of our hearts. Hope is the flower that refuses to die off though winter's chill lays claim. Hope is the rushing river, moving the earth and watering the banks. It is more than strength; it fills any vessel and it strengthens any fight. I won't fall to despair, Grace. Hope keeps my feet moving. And though doubt tries to fill my mind, hope has taken me captive. I am its slave. And because I am, my soul is under obligation - hope blooms in me. I hope it is still blooming in you. — Heather Burch

She did not know how long she fell with them.
But then there was a rushing, roaring below - a frozen river. Whispers and foggy light were rising to meet them. No, not rising - this was the bottom.
An end to the abyss. And an end to her, perhaps, at last.
She didn't know if the Valg princes' hissing was from anger or pleasure as they slammed into that frozen river at the bottom of her soul. — Sarah J. Maas

First, let us light the torch of our awareness and learn again how to drink tea, eat, wash dishes, walk, sit, drive, and work in awareness. We do not have to be swept along by circumstances. We are not just a leaf or a log in a rushing river. With awareness, each of our daily acts takes on a new meaning, and we discover that we are more than machines, that our activities are not just mindless repetitions. We find that life is a miracle, the universe is a miracle, and we too are a miracle. — Nhat Hanh

It's amazing to think that there must be this river of ideas constantly rushing inside of a person, and once you've somehow found a path into it, then it's just there, whether you will it to be or not. — Greg Saunier

I try to understand, but all I hear is a river of words, rushing and thundering and pushing me beneath the surface. Now and then a word I know darts up like a sparkling fish, but then it's all dark moving water again. — Katherine Applegate

What I mean, King, is this. We are the true Renouncers, because change is our very secret. We lose, in order to find. We have no faith in the never-changing.

What do you mean?

Haven't you noticed the detachment of the rushing river, as it runs splashing from its mountain cave? It gives itself away so swiftly, and only thus it finds itself. What is never changing, for the river, is the desert sand, where it loses its course. — Rabindranath Tagore

The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills. For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him ... the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood. — Ray Bradbury

They were relaxing at the top of a waterfall, in a small, still pool where the mountain waters hit an upward slope of folded granite. It was sort of a rounded bathtub, carved out of the rock throughout the centuries by the rushing river, a river so hidden that it was without a name. Just below were the falls, about a 30-foot drop into another, much larger pool of clearest water that was gathered for a respite, a compromise in the river's relentless schedule downward, between split-level decks of flat rock. Further on, the river reanimated and released into a sharp ravine, pulling westward, down through the rugged mountains and faceless forest
the Black Hills National Forest
gaining force until it joined with the rush of the Castle River, near the old Custer Trail, and was swallowed into the Deerfield Reservoir to collect and prepare for the touch of man. — Ron Parsons