Shallow Water Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes ideas hold us down; they become heavy anchors that hold the bark of identity fixated in shallow, dead water. — John O'Donohue

Things are never as they seem. A person. A Mark. A statement. They are always deeper than we perceive, like walking in the ocean and suddenly dipping under the surface because the bottom has disappeared beneath your feet. The water appears shallow until you are suddenly flailing around beneath the surface, desperately searching for stable ground once again. — Kelseyleigh Reber

...both he and she were creek beds, quiet when they were full and quiet when they were dry. But when they were half-full, wearing a coat of shallow water, the current bumped over the rocks and valleys in the creek beds, wearing down the earth. Giving someone else a little of who they were hurt more than giving up none or all of it. — Anna-Marie McLemore

The greatest hunger in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfied- indeed, often more dissatisfied than when they began. The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found. The pearl is also called essence, the breath of god, the water of life ... labels for what we, in our more prosaic scientific age, would simply call TRANSFORMATION. — Deepak Chopra

Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep. — Edie Brickell

You might want to water your skank. She's looking pretty shallow. — Scott Tracey

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water isbeing warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. — Henry David Thoreau

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water — Raquel Cepeda

The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold, just now the world became perfect!' - thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I'd never seen him bare-chested. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable to me. His smooth, tight skin wrapped around the long muscles he'd developed over a lifetime of hard work.
He found a shallow spot and sat, settling me onto his lap, holding my back to his chest. I couldn't stop shaking and it had nothing to do with the water or with being half dressed in a cave with a boy.
"Nothing else matters," Henry said in my ear. "I'm here. Start at the beginning. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Her breathing was shallow, a seashore slowly being covered with water. — David Levithan

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. — Mary Oliver

A positive mind is like a powerful stream of water that is gathering volume and force from hundreds of tributaries all along its course. The further on it goes the greater its power, until when it reaches its goal, that power is simply immense. A negative mind, however, would be something like a stream, that the further it flows the more divisions it makes, until, when it reaches its goal, instead of being one powerful stream, it has become a hundred, small, weak, shallow streams. — Christian D. Larson

Sally's head plopped into the shallow water and rolled face up. For a while, the changing shades of pinks and oranges reflected across the surface of her dead eyes. — Shirley A. Martin

The only way Congress can get one dollar to spend is to take that one dollar from Americans, borrow that one dollar from Americans, or inflate that one dollar from Americans. So, it's very much like the visual image of a swimming pool. A person notes there is a shallow end, so he takes the water out of the deep end and pours it in the shallow end, hoping to raise the height of the water in the pool - and you would call that person stupid. — Walter E. Williams

Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country's energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It's catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it. — Sarah Palin

I imagine running
to the creek and diving in headfirst, the creek so shallow that my hands scrape against the rocks, and my body
slides into the cold water, the shock of the cold giving way to numbness, and I would stay there, float down with
that water first to the Cahaba River, then to the Alabama River, then to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. — John Green

Stand or stumble through the shallow water to lie groaning on the shore. He had a famished and a savage look like a dog that has been chained and forgotten in a kennel for a week. It was Thorin, but you could only have told it by his golden chain, and by the colour of his now dirty and tattered sky-blue hood with its tarnished — J.R.R. Tolkien

For several centuries, the Celtic church of Ireland was spared the Greek dualism of matter and spirit. They regarded the world with the clear vision of faith. When a young Celtic monk saw his cat catch a salmon swimming in shallow water, he cried, The power of the Lord is in the paw of the cat! — Brennan Manning

It is shallow, but it is glowing. A shimmering, shifting light cascades up through the surface of the water. A soft radiance, enough to illuminate the pool and the stones that sit at the bottom. — Erin Morgenstern

It's the colors that will make you stray. They sing to you, the not-blue and the searing light, and no matter how tightly you tie yourself to the inbetween, eventually you will break free.
No one swims only in the shallow water. — Betsy Cornwell

I went along the level shore and walked in the shallow water, stepping in and out of it, as if drunk, enthralled by the soft gurgling of the swift current; I stood in the water up to my knees and imagined that I was sinking deeper and deeper into a whirlpool: deeper and deeper, the water was up to my chin, to my lips, over my head. Above me the current was rippling, around me there was a greenish silence, the swaying grasses wrapped around my legs. I was also swaying, like a blade of grass; small fish swam into my mouth and out of my ears; crayfish caught my toes with their claws; a large, slow fish brushed against my thigh. Peace. Indifference. "Hey!" I cried, silently, and sat down in the grove between the path and the river, between life and death. — Mesa Selimovic

I'm a firm believer in stories with arcs and beginnings and endings and all that. 'Scott Pilgrim' is sort of one long novel, and it's so long that I get confused and sort of tread water sometimes. But there's definitely a goal to it. People who just dismiss it as shallow, that's their prerogative, but it's not really my intent. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

When you attain the control of the internal direction of your attention, you will no longer stand in shallow water but will launch out into the deep of life. — Neville Goddard

My love life since I moved to New York from Chicago has been like a desert. I've had tiny little interactions of love, like finding shallow pools of water to drink from, and then I've moved on, hoping that I've stored enough love and affection and excitement to get me to the next place. — Jami Attenberg

He sat on the logs, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun warm on his back the river shallow ahead entering the woods, curving into the woods, shallows light glittering, big water-smooth rocks, cedars along the bank and white birches, the logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark, gray to the touch; slowly the feeling of disappointment left him. — Ernest Hemingway,

Nothing is nicer than diving with your eyes open. Diving down as far as the shimmering legs of your mother and father who have just come back from swimming and now are wading to shore through the shallow water. Nothing more fun than to tickle them and to hear, muffled by the water, how they shriek because they know it will make their child happy. — Jenny Erpenbeck

If we come from the water, I conclude that we come from different kinds of it. I will meet a person and in his eyes see an ocean, deep and never ending; then I will meet another person and feel as though I have stepped into a shallow puddle on the street, there is nothing in it. Or maybe some of us come from the water, and some of us come from somewhere else; then it's all a matter of finding those who are the same as us. — C. JoyBell C.

Stop shallow water from running, it will rage; tread on a worm and it will turn. — Robert Greene

The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found. — Deepak Chopra

It's really just paint. I muse on that, sometimes, Jamie. When I can't sleep. How a little paint can make shallow water seem deep. — Stephen King

Home. When it rains, you can smell the leaves in the forest and the sand. It's all so small and mild, the landscape surrounding the lake, so manageable. The leaves and the sand are so close, it's as if you might, if you wanted, pull them on over your head. And the lake always laps at the shore so gently, licking the hand you dip into it like a young dog, and the water is soft and shallow. — Jenny Erpenbeck

Display is like shallow water, where you can see the muddy bottom. — Alphonse Karr

Clara smoked in the shallow pool as Lana del Rey poured from her phone. She shaded her eyes. She liked the shallow pool because she could lay out, half in the sun, half in the water, and not get her hair wet. She had black eyeliner smeared under her eyes from who-knows-when, and while she never bothered to fix it, she did apply more, so she looked permanently hung over. She liked that. — Lisa Martens

Lovers of truth do not fear stormy or dirty water. What we fear is shallow water! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Oil the saw, sharpen axes,
Learn the names of all the peaks you see and which is highest-
there are hundreds-
Learn by heart the drainages between
Go find a shallow pool of snowmelt on a good day, bathe in the lukewarm water. — Gary Snyder

If you're a beach person or a golfer, Key West is not for you. Most of the sand has been imported, and the water is shallow until you've waded far out, and all the way the sea floor is covered with yucky algae and sea grass. — Edmund White

The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. "In this year A.D. 61", according to Tacitus, "a severe disaster was sustained in Britain." Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack "the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids — Winston S. Churchill

Don't leave my ocean for shallow waters then ask me about the moon. — Dream Hampton

But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts. — Joseph Conrad

Keynesians think that you can take water from the deep end of the swimming, pump it into the shallow end of the swimming pool and somehow the water level of the swimming pool will rise. — Thomas Woods

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me. — Elizabeth Bishop

People are like water in a pond where you cannot see the bottom. You think you know where it is shallow and where it is deep but it's only when you have to dive in head first that you find out where it is truly deep. — J.L. Witterick

The Bahamas has mangrove nurseries, coral reefs, shallow sea grass beds, and deep oceanic trenches - all perfect ecosystems for sharks. Photographing multiple shark species in exquisite water was the assignment I had dreamed about from the start. — Brian Skerry

It was sinister, overpowering; it was like a troubled dream conjured by the evil thoughts of a past day. There was no suggestion of ultimate hope, and no possibility of escape. It was a terrible place. I sat up on the deck with my chin in my hands, looking in front of me thinking of nothing, my heart heavy, longing for some nameless thing that I could not explain even to myself. I did not want to feel depressed like this. I wanted to laugh, and not to care about a thought, and to be with people who did not matter, and to have some fun taking that girl ashore. I did not want to be in a lost mood, wretched and distressed. I wished Gudvangen was different, and the mountains wider apart, and the sun shining in a clear sky, and the blue water warm and shallow. — Daphne Du Maurier

Praise a fool, and slay him; for the canvas of his vanity is spread; His bark is shallow in the water, and a sudden gust shall sink it: Praise a wise man, and speed him on his way; for he carrieth the ballast of humility, And is glad when his course is cheered by the sympathy of brethren ashore. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it. — Charles Lyell

Stop it." Isabelle tapped a booted foot in the shallow water at the lake's edge. "Both of you. In fact, all three of you. If we don't stick together in the Seelie Court, we're dead."
"But I haven't-," Clary started.
"Maybe you haven't, but the way you let those two act ... " Isabelle indicated the boys with a disdainful wave of her hand.
"I can't tell them what to do!"
"Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you. — Cassandra Clare

I'm not even sure he would have realized he was permitted to have his own desires and preferences. That it would have been okay for him to have a favorite place, to walk with satisfaction down the long straight boulevards of whatever post he may have gone to next, to admire the uniformity of the grass, green and neatly shorn beneath a blue, limitless sky, to bury himself in a sandy shallow of some clear cold stream and let the water wash over the pitted skin of his scarred body. I don't know what his favorite place would have been like, because I don't believe he would have let himself have one. He would have waited for one to be assigned to him. That's the way he was ... Everything he'd done had been a response to a preexisting expectation. — Kevin Powers

Carefully measure the depth of water when crossing your Rubicon in life. The river was shallow when Julius Caesar crossed 2000 years ago. — Shahid Hussain Raja

It's the water beyond the titanium sand that draws me in. Not blue, not even the bright green of a clear lagoon, something more like sea foam. A green so bright it has a tint of yellow. The color of clarity. Of shallow water over white sand. — Hugh Howey

collect As many tripods as you think you'll need, Together with the other kinds of vessels That the rites of sacrifice require: cauldrons, Shallow basins, bowls; pour tall jugs full 8860 Of purest water from the sacred spring; Have ready wood that's dry and quick to catch; And finally, be sure a sharp knife's there. All else I leave to you." Those — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I take the seashell from my jeans pocket and rub my fingers across its silken, indented surface, shallow as my own open hand. This chalice, subtly shaped by some divine intelligence to allow water to flow in and out with ease, is what I aspire to become: a vessel through which feelings can pour in and spill right out again, without all the grasping and holding that obstructs the flow. Can I be as serene and simple as this bleached shell, rubbed smooth by wind and water, receiving and releasing, filling and emptying and filling again, eternally receptive to the currents of life? — Katrina Kenison

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful. — David Lynch

It's a perfect wave when small and the most beautiful and scary wave on Earth when it's big, as the swell from deep water hits the shallow reef ledge. A ten-foot high wave and a 30-footer break in the same depth of water. — Kelly Slater

At night, returning from work, Anil would slip out of her sandals and stand in the shallow water, her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her. She would stand there for a while, then walk wet-footed to bed. — Michael Ondaatje