Tales Of The Sea Quotes & Sayings

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occured one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12 gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter, and crashing glass. Yet the neighbors reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the noise and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fires, and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door. — Hunter S. Thompson

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows — Kelly Armstrong

All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It reminds me of a friend of mine who was very interested in a French philosophy called deconstruction. He advertised to me as one of deconstruction's selling points that deconstruction deconstructs itself. I couldn't help responding, if deconstruction deconstructs itself, why bother reading its long, boring books? Why not go for a jog instead, or reread one of Patrick O'Brian's tremendous tales of the sea? — Eric Kaplan

I'm not interested in making art unless I'm totally freaked out and worried people are going to hate it. — Grimes

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress. — Mahatma Gandhi

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue ...
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that look like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. — Salman Rushdie

This is a story that could only have taken place in the tropics, where the climate draws sea rovers, pirates, and desperadoes from all corners of the world. They come and go, these adventurers, bedazzled and dazzling, and they leave women behind, lovers, who repeat outlandish tales, murmuring to themselves unheard, and if heard, not believed ... — Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy. — A.S. Byatt

He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
picking the weft threads
threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:

"Once there was
and there was not,
oh, best beloved,
when the world was filled with wishes
the way the sea is filled with fishes..."

All those threads
pulling us back
to another world, another time,
when goosegirls married well
and frogs could rhyme,
when maids spoke syllables of pearl
and stepmothers came to grief.

.... (from The Storyteller poem) — Jane Yolen

Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle. — Ray Bradbury

I squared my shoulders, trying to ignore the fact that I was standing in the apartment of the sea witch, wearing a fairy-tale prom gown, waiting for the attack of the mermaids. — Seanan McGuire

He seemed to be staring at the chain hanging from the ceiling fan. Seconds later, he confirmed this by reaching out and tugging the chain.
Light clicked on.
He tugged the chain again.
Light went off.
Oh for gods' sake, he had a mean case of ADD sometimes. "Apollo," I snapped. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

With that characteristic touch of late-Romanov rashness, the government, by ukase of August 22, extended prohibition for the duration of the war. As the sale of vodka was a state monopoly, this act at one stroke cut off a third of the government's income. It was well known, commented a bewildered member of the Duma, that governments waging war seek by a variety of taxes and levies to increase income, but never since the dawn of history has a country in time of war renounced the principal source of its revenue. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, it means then that if you have a prophetic sensibility, you are committed to loving others and if you love others, you hate injustice. — Cornel West

It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows, listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travelers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning. — Charles Dickens

The reverent way his mouth had worshipped mine was replaced with a desperate conquering. — Katie Ashley

Next to a mother she wanted a quiet place where she could be alone when she wanted to be; to listen to the wind telling her strange tales, or hold the big spotted shell that murmured of the sea to her ear, or talk to the roses in the garden. — L.M. Montgomery

Once upon a time, a prince fell madly in love with a demon from the Underworld. When she disappeared back into the sea, he ached so much for her that he walked into the ocean and never returned.
- Kenettran Folk Tales, various authors — Marie Lu

We can see the child moving rather serenely in the uterus. The child senses aggression in its sanctuary. We see the child's mouth wide open in a silent scream. — Bernard Nathanson

A long time ago in a kingdom by the sea there lived a princess as tall and bright as a sunflower. — Jeanne Desy

If you have to have a policy manual, publish the 'Ten Commandments.' — Robert Townsend

Many a year I told her tales. And then the time came for me to watch. And watch I have. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now? — Murasaki Shikibu

There's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars. — Kate Forsyth

I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock. — Edgar Allan Poe

It's a crooked system, but gin straight take the pain away. — Ludacris

I credit my mom Debbie for creating a solid family base, ... She gave me a strong sense of reality so I could avoid falling into the normal pitfalls of child actors. — Elijah Wood

With thee all tales are sweet; each clime has charms; earth - sea alike - our world within our arms. — Lord Byron

; the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks ... — Joseph Conrad

The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
where they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools -
We were a ghastly crew. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sometimes,' Beauty said softly, sipping from her silver goblet, 'everyone needs to let the beast inside them out for a while'. She laughed, a sound like a waterfall meeting the sea and more glitter escaped from her fingertips. 'I like to see it. We all have our dark lusts. We should enjoy them. — Sarah Pinborough

The Hawk hired fifty harpers and jesters and taught them new songs. Songs about the puny fairy fool who had been chased away from Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea by the legendary
Hawk. And being such a legend in his own time, his tales were ceded great truth and staying power. The players
were delighted with the epic grandeur of such a wild tale. When they had rehearsed to perfection the ditties and
refrains portraying the defeat of the fool, the Hawk sent them into the counties of Scotland and England. Grimm
accompanied the group of players traveling to Edinburgh to help spread the tale himself, while Hawk spent late hours by the candle scribbling, crossing out and perfecting his command for when the fool came. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he would reach for his set of sharp awls and blades and begin carving toy soldiers and dolls, one by one. — Karen Marie Moning

Fishes and tales And a fisherman's daughter Walks in the rain, She walks to the water To the sea. — Daniel Lanois

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea. — Oscar Wilde