Quotes & Sayings About Walking In Water

But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off. — Deb Caletti

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

While walking in a rapid stream we cannot tread twice in the same water. Neither can we spend twice the same time. When we pass out of that door, the work of this meeting will be closed to us forever. We shall never spend the time of this evening again. Then should we not keep a record of our work, teachings, and counsel. — Wilford Woodruff

Naturalism by its purpose engineers the displacement of the miracle and puts in its place explanations that defy reason. Those who smirk at His walking on water have forgotten the miracle He has already performed in the very composition of water. Think — Ravi Zacharias

Our guns were still strapped onto our backs, because a gun meant life. Without it there was no life in the LRA. After crossing the water and walking for a long time, there was a whisper in my heart, telling me that if we kept the guns we would get killed.

I was learning to listen to this gentle voice that spoke to my heart. This time what was said was hard to accept. I didn't know how I would convince my friends to throw away what seemed to be their last hope. The voice would not leave me alone. It continued to whisper in my ears to drop the guns. — Grace Akallo

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree. — William Butler Yeats

Listening to her, one experienced a deep uneasiness as of having avoided an urgent responsibility, like someone who, walking at night along the banks of a stream, catches a glimpse in the water of a white face or a moving limb and turns quickly away, refusing to help or to search for help. We all see the faces in the water. We smother our memory of them, even our belief in their reality, and become calm people of the world; or we can neither forget or help them. Sometimes by a trick of circumstances or dream or a hostile neighborhood of light we see our own face. — Janet Frame

A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. "What are you doing, son?" the man asks. "You see how many starfish there are? You'll never make a difference." The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. "It sure made a difference to that one," he said. — Nicholas D. Kristof

What was "walking on water," if it wasn't Bible talk for surfing? In Australia once, a local surfer, holding the biggest can of beer Flip had ever seen, had even sold him a fragment of the True Board. — Anonymous

Pushing to his feet in an effort to avoid some of the water, Bram gave his wet and distinctly smelly dog a pat before he straightened, his breath becoming lodged in his throat when Miss Plum began walking toward him. Regret settled in as the thought struck him that there was really no way to avoid finally making her acquaintance even while smelling much like his dog. Summoning up a smile, he was about to offer her a greeting when a trace of smoke coming from one of the castle towers captured his attention. Knowing full well there was only one reasonable explanation for the smoke, he stepped toward Miss Plum just as a yell split the air. "Watch out below." As the roar of a cannon sounded, Bram did the only thing that sprang to mind. He yanked Miss Plum close to him, locked his arms around her slender body, and . . . jumped back into the moat. — Jen Turano

they kept moving all night, stopping only occasionally to scoop some water from a stream or listen to see if anyone was following them or near them at all. As dawn came, Jacob was exhausted. But the two men did not stop moving. They were not running now. They were walking, but Avi set a brisk and steady pace. Jacob wanted to stop. He wanted to ask Avi if they could rest, even for a little while. But he had been told not to say a word, and Jacob knew their very lives depended on his obeying. At least the pain in his feet and in his belly from lack of food and the fatigue permeating every fiber of his being kept his mind off the fact that he would never see his parents or his sister again. — Joel C. Rosenberg

If Jesus, Jesse James, and a herd of pink robot unicorns strolled in walking on water, this bunch wouldn't even look up. — Richard Kadrey

Since most houses today have running water, the ease with which most Americans can give water to a guest obscures the point that everyone in the biblical culture understood: "cold water" came only from the town well or cistern because water in jars at home warmed up very quickly in the heat. Giving a cup of cold water meant inconveniencing yourself and walking to the town well carrying a container, perhaps waiting in line to draw the water, lifting the water up out of the ground, and then carrying the water back to the house - all so someone could quench his thirst. The fact that Christ connects giving cold water with rewards to be received in the future is a powerful testimony to the value of even the most seemingly mundane good works in the eyes of God. — John W. Schoenheit

These little contradictions are in all of us. They're in me at least. And so I forgot that I had been awake for 30 hours and kept walking, grateful to be a little boat full of water, still floating. — John Green

I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I'm sure you'll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior. — Terry Pratchett

Decide for yourselves as to what you should thing of those who say there is God, that he is the preserver of justice and that he is the protector of all, even after seeing the practice of untouchablity in the form of man being banned from human sight and contact, from walking into the streets, from entering the temples and drawing water from a tank, is rampant in the land, and yet that land is not spared from being razed by an earthquake, burnt by the fiery lava of a volcano, engulfed in a deluge from the ocean, submerged in the chasm of the earth, or fragemented by thunder-storm. — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

How about a kiss, Saumensch?
He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments longer before climbing out and handing her the book. His pants clung to him, and he did not stop walking. In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them. — Markus Zusak

Jesus told parables. When he wanted to say something really profound about God, he went into parable. I don't find it surprising then that when earliest Christianity wanted to say something profound about Jesus, they went into parable too. That doesn't mean everything is a parable. When it says Jesus was in Nazareth I don't think that's a parable, I think Jesus was in Nazareth. When it talks about Jesus walking on the water, I don't think that's the point at all, I think the point is that the church without Jesus sinks. — John Dominic Crossan

I been wading in the water. I been walking all over the River Jordan. But what it get me, huh? I done been baptized with blood of the lamb and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But what I got, huh? My enemies all around me picking the flesh from my bones. I'm chocking on my own blood and all you got to give me is salvation? — August Wilson

I don't spot junk neighbourhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowsers wand: 'Junk here! — William S. Burroughs

I buy water at the liquor store across the street from where I live. So I'm walking into the door, and standing, loitering, outside the door is a man. And I walk by him to go in, and he says, I want pussy! Now, I don't want to seem conceited or anything, but he was talking about me! — Sarah Silverman

Believe in myself and I sink into the waves of worry, procrastination, daily tasks, and diagnoses. There is no dry ground in sight. But sink hard into God and he will buoy the soul on top of the water. Stepping out of the boat and walking toward Jesus, I realized how looking deep into the eyes of God is art all by itself. — Emily P. Freeman

Hoover Dam," Thalia said. "It's huge."
We stood at the river's edge, looking up at a curve of concrete that loomed between the cliffs. People were walking along the top of the dam. They were so tiny they looked like fleas.
The naiads had left with a lot of grumbling - not in words I could understand, but it was obvious they hated this dam blocking up their nice river. Our canoes floated back downstream, swirling in the wake from the dam's discharge vents.
"Seven hundred feet tall," I said. "Built in the 1930s."
"Five million cubic acres of water," Thalia said.
Graver sighed. "Largest construction project in the United States."
Zoe stared at us. "How do you know all that?"
"Annabeth," I said. "She liked architecture."
"She was nuts about monuments," Thalia said.
"Spouted facts all the time." Grover sniffled. "So annoying."
"I wish she were here," I said. — Rick Riordan

I quickly realised that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold. — Patrick Modiano

APPROACH
Rain is falling. Winter approaches. I drive towards it. In the slow rain. In the semi-darkness. Cello music is playing in the car. The deep sad sound of the cello. It almost swamps me. Routine endeavours to swamp me. The everyday paying of bills.
But I paint men walking in a city of icebergs and crystal. Some of the icebergs are red. I paint a woman swimming in green wavy water. Surrounded by desert mesas. Bright orange in the sunlight. With darker orange for shadows. I paint two people. With purple and pink and yellow and blue circles overlapping the boundaries of their bodies. Dancing.
Life is not ordinary. When I see you tonight I will press my lips to your eyelids. Each one in turn. I will rub my fingertips over the skin on the back of your hands and around your wrists. I will sigh. I will growl. I will whinny. I will gallop into your smile. One sharp foot after the other. — Jay Woodman

Between birth and death, neighbour, there is no business that is not risky; drinking water in a sitting position included! . The gist of the matter is to do everything with fine tuning as an acrobat does when walking a tight rope, like a carpenter measuring everything meticulously! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Water fell from the sky and dripped from the branches, streaming down the gully of the trail. I walked beneath the enormous trees, the forest canopy high above me, the bushes and low-growing plants that edged the trail soaking me as I brushed past. Wet and miserable as it was, the forest was magical - Gothic in its green grandiosity, both luminous and dark, so lavish in its fecundity that it looked surreal, as if I were walking through a fairy tale rather than the actual world. — Cheryl Strayed

Holding back a cough and splutter I cover my mouth with my hand, so as not to lose any of the precious nectar I'm holding. Oh my! I intently watch the next guest to arrive in the reception, mesmerised, for all I know he could be walking on water for how his streamlined and buff body glides to the desk. — A.J. Walters

Swlmmlng After swallowing some water at Changsha I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li. I see the entire Chu sky. Wind batters me, waves hit me-I don't care. Better than walking lazily in the patio. Today I have a lot of time. Here on the river the Master said "Dying-dying into the past-is like a river flowing." — Mao Zedong

I know what I want is impossible. If I can make my language flat enough, exact enough, if I can rinse each sentence clean enough, like washing a stone over and over again in river water, if I can find the right perch or crevice from which to record everything, if I can give myself enough white space, maybe I could do it. I could tell you this story while walking out of this story. I could - it all could - just disappear. — Maggie Nelson

What a dissimilarity we see in walking, swimming, and flying. And yet it is one and the same motion: it is just that the load- bearing capacity of the earth differs from that of the water, and that that of the water differs from that of the air! Thus we should also learn to fly as thinkers
and not imagine that we are thereby becoming idle dreamers! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I opened my louvres and looked at Comfort, walking in the heavy rain, crying bitterly.
I heard mom saying, Anywhere you want to go, you can, but don't come back again to this house.
Comfort was beautiful, but her stealing attributes brought reproach on her and painted her beauty with dark impressions.
I looked at her, walking barefooted on the muddy ground congested with rain water. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I stood for a while the way I had the first time they left, letting all the knots of fear unclench. Nothing had happened, I told myself. I am perfectly okay. He was just a creepy, horny, not-nice man, and now he's gone. But then I shoved my tent back into my pack, turned off my stove, dumped the almost-boiling water out into the grass, and swished the pot in the pond so it cooled. I took a swig of my iodine water and crammed my water bottle and my damp T-shirt, bra, and shorts back into my pack. I lifted Monster, buckled it on, stepped onto the trail, and started walking northward in the fading light. I walked and I walked, my mind shifting into a primal gear that was void of anything but forward motion, and I walked until walking became unbearable, until I believed I couldn't walk even one more step. And then I ran. — Cheryl Strayed

Marathon

2. Song of the River

Once we were happy, we had no memories.
For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.
We were always walking parallel to a river
with no sense of progression
though the trees across from us
were sometimes birch, sometimes cypress-
the sky was blue, a matrix of blue glass.

While, in the river, things were going by-
a few leaves, a child's boat painted red and white,
its sail stained by the water-

As they passed, on the surface we could see ourselves;
we seemed to drift
apart and together, as the river
linked us forever, though up ahead
were other couples, choosing souvenirs. — Louise Gluck

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant. — William Scranton

You haven't lost your wits, have you?" Lopen asked, eyeing the bones. "Because if you have, I've got a cousin who makes this drink for people who've lost their wits, and it might make you better, sure." "If I'd lost my wits," Kaladin said, walking over to a pool of still water to wash off the carapace helm, "would I say that I had?" "I don't know," Lopen said, leaning back. "Maybe. Guess it doesn't matter if you're crazy or not." "You'd follow a crazy man into battle?" "Sure," Lopen said. "If you're crazy, you're a good type, and I like you. Not a killing-people-in-their-sleep type of crazy. — Brandon Sanderson

'Believing' cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgement about whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, but my believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether or not he really did do it. So also with the story of Jesus walking on water: Believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether he really did do it. 'Belief' cannot be the basis for historical conclusions; it has no direct relevance. — Marcus Borg

Walking on water wasn't built in a day. — Jack Kerouac

Fairies with gossamer wings,
Bring forth beauty, grace and joyful things.
Fairies of the earth are caretakers of our soil, water and trees,
They watch over beautiful creatures such as bears, bunnies and bees.
Fairies ask that you breathe in and appreciate the vantage point from which you stand,
Then trod carefully and respectfully with each intentional step you make across this beautiful land. — Molly Friedenfeld

In the ancient world, especially among nomadic people, life was lived on foot. They walked step by step along a "path" or "way" in search of food and water for their flocks and herds. As a result, walking became a metaphor for the journey of life. We are called "to live [our lives] before God in such a way that every single step is made with reference to [him] and every day experiences him close at hand."4 To each of us, God says as He did to Abraham centuries ago, "Walk before me" (Gen. 17:1). Walking, however, is never simply walking per se. It is always walking along a particular way. We can walk along "the way of the LORD" (Gen. 18:19) - "the way of the righteous" (Ps. 1:6; cf. Prov. 8:20; 2 Peter 2:21), "the path of life" (Ps. 16:11; Prov. 10:17), "the good way" (Jer. 6:16), and "the way of the truth" (2 Peter — Robert Saucy

In the countryside by nights without the moon, there sometimes roamed an indigent, a recycled reject with eyes sifting the darkness and sorting the scattered scents, walking beside deep hollows and ditches of stinking water. The hours he kept were usually reserved for the drunk and the sleeping. With his sloe-lidded eyes that in the daytime tried to hide from the sun, he spied treasures all over the land. No thing unlocked was safe from his grasp, he who could squat in the road and talk to the dogs and still their dying growls, all save one — Larry Brown

For years and years, even during the time of my first visit in 1962, it has been said that Calcutta was dying, that its port was silting up, its antiquated industry declining, but Calcutta hadn't died. It hadn't done much, but it had gone on; and it had begun to appear that the prophecy has been excessive. Now it occurred to me that perhaps this was what happened when cities died. They don't die with a bang; they didn't die only when they were abandoned. Perhaps, they died like this: when everybody was suffering, when transport was so hard that working people gave up jobs they needed because the fear the suffering of the travel; When no one had clean water or air; No one could go walking. Perhaps city died when they lost amenities that cities provided, the visual excitement, the heightened sense of human possibility, and became simply places where there were too many people, and people suffered. — V.S. Naipaul

Sunlight on orchids
Lightning on water
Twilight calls your name
I have searched for you for centuries
I am the woman who fell in love by accident-
Virtual love- who would have thought, is it even possible? ( I believe so )
I raise my white flag and listen for your echo in my dreams
I'm walking backwards to find you in my past
I'm entangled in your fate~

~Lady A~ — Ladyaslan

We didn't build our bridges simply to avoid walking on water. Nothing so obvious. A bridge is a meeting place. A neutral place. A casual place. Enemies will choose to meet on a bridge and end their quarrel in that void ... For lovers, a bridge is a possibility, a metaphor of their chances. And for the traffic in whispered goods, where else but a bridge in the night? — Jeanette Winterson

It is said that angels come as thoughts, as visions, as dreams, as animals, as the light on the water or in clouds and rainbows, and as people too. Are they walking on this earth as people in disguise? Or do they appear for that one moment and vanish into ether again? Or is it really us, mere humans, who for a moment are picked up by the hand of God and made to speak unwittingly the words another needs to hear, or to hold out a life line to another soul? — Sophy Burnham

Look what I found, Eight!"
Eight disappears from the grass and reappears up in the air next to the Chest. He wraps his arms around it and hugs it. Slime and all. Then he teleports back to the edge of the lake, the Chest still in his hands. "I can't believe it," Eight finally says. "All this time, it was right here." He looks stunned.
"It was inside a Mog ship at the bottom of the lake," I say, walking out of the water.
Eight disappears again and teleports directly in front of me, our noses practically touching. Before I can register how nice his warm breath feels on my face, he picks me up and kisses me hard on the mouth as he twirls me around. My body stiffens and I suddenly have no idea what to do with my hands. I don't know what to do at all, so I just let it happen. He tastes salty and sweet at the same time. The whole world disappears and I feel as if I'm floating in darkness. (Rise of the Nine) — Pittacus Lore

The morning came, pale and clammy. Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and that his neck was stiff. "Walking for pleasure! Why didn't I drive?" he thought, as he usually did at the beginning of an expedition. "And all my beautiful feather beds are sold to the Sackville-Bagginses! These tree-roots would do them good." He stretched. "Wake up, hobbits!" he cried. "It's a beautiful morning."
"What's beautiful about it?" said Pippin, peering over the edge of his blanket with one eye. "Sam! Get breakfast ready for half-past nine! Have you got the bath-water hot?"
Sam jumped up, looking rather bleary. "No, sir, I haven't, sir!" he said.
Frodo stripped the blankets from Pippin and rolled him over, and then walked off to the edge of the wood. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she'd been walking in the rain, though there hadn't been rain for days. She smelled like cigarette smoke and river water. — Sarah Addison Allen

I was at the annual meeting of a state library association a few years later, when the children were in the process of leaving the nest, and one of the librarians asked me, "What do you think you and Hugh have done which was the best for your children?"
I answered immediately and without thinking, "We love each other. — Madeleine L'Engle

Plain Kate greased her boots and bandaged her feet, and soon she would walk like a Roamer born. She helped Drina with the water and the wood, and in the long, wet evenings she carved objarka burji.
Plain Kate carved fast and learned slowly. She was bewildered most of the time, but Daj called her mira again, and when she asked Drina what it meant, the girl replied, "It means she likes you. It means your family."
Family.
It could have kept her walking for a hundred miles. And she did walk far. — Erin Bow

It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. — Terry Tempest Williams

Are you okay?"
I waved my hand at him dismissively. He crouched down, touched my cheek, looked me up and down, and then smirked.
"That was a pygmy marmoset, by the way. Just in case you were wondering."
I wheezed. "Thank you, oh Walking Monkey Dictionary."
He laughed and got out bottled water for both of us, then handed me an energy bar.
"Aren't you going to eat one?"
He put a hand on his chest and scoffed. "What, me? Eat an energy bar when the jungle is full of delicious monkeys? No thanks. I'm not hungry."
I nibbled my energy bar in silence and checked the Golden Fruit to make sure it wasn't bruised. It was still safely wrapped up in my quilt.
Between bites, I said, "You know, all in all, we made it out of the city fairly unscathed."
His mouth fell open. "Unscathed? Kelsey, I have monkey bites all over my back and in other places that I don't even want to think about!"
"I said fairly."
He grunted at me. — Colleen Houck

You walk into a room and flip a switch and the room fills with light. You leave your garbage in bags on the curbside, and a truck comes and transports it to some invisible place. When you're in danger, you call for the police. Hot water pours from faucets. Lift a receiver or press a button on a telephone, and you can speak to anyone. All the information in the world is on the Internet, and the Internet is all around you, drifting through the air like pollen on a summer breeze. There is money, slips of paper that can be traded for anything: houses, boats, perfect teeth. There are dentists. She tried to imagine this life playing out somewhere at the present moment. Some parallel Kristen in an air-conditioned room, waking from an unsettling dream of walking through an empty landscape. — Emily St. John Mandel

walking slowly along the alleys and through the passages, up and down stairways, deeper into the older part, unchanged in generations. Water dripped off rotting eaves, the stones were slimy, wood creaked, doors hung crooked but fast closed. People moved ahead of him and behind like shadows. One moment it would be strange, frightening and bitterly infectious, the next he thought he recognized something. He would turn a corner and see exactly what he expected, a skyline or a crooked wall exactly as he had known it would be, a door with huge iron studs whose pattern he could have traced with his eyes closed. — Anne Perry

It was then that I sprang my surprise. Oh, what a dreamy pet! She walked up to the open suitcase as if stalking it from afar, at a kind of slow-motion walk, peering at that distant treasure box on the luggage support. (Was there something wrong, I wondered, with those great gray eyes of hers, or were we both plunged in the same enchanted mist?) She stepped up to it, lifting her rather high-heeled feet rather high, and bending her beautiful boy-knees while she walked through dilating space with the lentor of one walking under water or in a flight dream. — Vladimir Nabokov

When I was a kid, there was nothing better than water balloon fights. I grew up in Brooklyn: we had the fire hydrants, and we would open up a soda can at both ends and squirt people walking by. I love the kinds of things that encourage you to let your guard down, be open and vulnerable, and just to be laughing sincerely. — Dawnn Lewis

For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas. He realizes the stick and the man are one thing and he can fall. He has violated the laws beneath the laws of men and countries, something deeper, the earth and the sea, the explosions of trees. He has to care again. He has to be water again, rock, earth with its new spring wildflowers and its beautiful, complex mosses. — Linda Hogan

Turn to my left and see a young couple walking along the sidewalk. Seattle's Alki Beach is pretty much deserted, aside from a few die-hards, or early morning insomniacs, like me. The young couple are walking away from me, hand in hand, smiling at each other, and I point my lens at them and click. I zoom in on their sneaker-clad feet and locked hands and shoot some more, my photographer's eye appreciating their intimate moment on the beach. I inhale the salty air and stare out at the sound once again as a red-sailed boat gently glides out on the water. The early morning sunshine is — Kristen Proby

The Sun Going South
In late sunshine I wander troubled.
Restless I wander in autumn sunlight.
Too many changes, partings, and deaths.
Doors have closed that were always open.
Trees that held the sky up are cut down.
So much that I alone remember!
This creek runs dry among its stones.
Souls of the dead, come drink this water!
Come into this side valley with me,
a restless old woman, unseemly,
troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones. — Ursula K. Le Guin

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, It's my own business. — Madeleine L'Engle

Most people miss their whole lives, you know. Listen, life isn't when you are standing on top of a mountain looking at a sunset. Life isn't waiting at the alter or the moment your child is born or that time you were swimming in a deep water and a dolphin came up alongside you. These are fragments. 10 or 12 grains of sand spread throughout your entire existence. These are not life. Life is brushing your teeth or making a sandwich or watching the news or waiting for the bus. Or walking. Every day, thousands of tiny events happen and if you're not watching, if you're not careful, if you don't capture them and make them COUNT, your could miss it. You could miss your whole life. — Toni Jordan

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world. — Robert Macfarlane

Respect your body: you can only climb a mountain if you give your body the attention it deserves. You have all the time that life grants you, as long as you walk without demanding what can't be granted. If you go too fast you will grow tired and give up half way there. If you go too slow, night will fall and you will be lost. Enjoy the scenery, take delight in the cool spring water and the fruit that nature generously offers you, but keep on walking. — Paulo Coelho

I look at the knife-
Resting in a puddle of water-
Near the ledge by the pulpit behind Aaron-
Where I dropped it-
And I hear it calling to me-
Take me, it says-
Take me and use me, it says-
Aaron hold open his arms.
"Murder me," he says. "Become a man."
Never let me go says the knife — Patrick Ness

Australia is an island surrounded by water. My fondest memories growing up were trips to the beach, walking around the harbor and playing in the beautiful parks. — Tammin Sursok

Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown. — Flannery O'Connor

This dim coolness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street what the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say equally luminous, and presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which my senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed only piecemeal; and so it was quite in harmony with my state of repose which (thanks to the enlivening adventures related in my books) sustained, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running water, the shock and animation of a torrent of activity. — Marcel Proust

Look at it another way. A stack of five hundred sheets of paper is two to three inches high. How high would the stack be if it had 6 x 1023 sheets? That stack would reach from the earth to the sun, not once, but more than one million times.2 Yet, in about two gulps of water, God has packed that many molecules. The miracle of walking on water is small for Him who created it in the first place. The multiplication of bread was but a simple command for Him when the very earth was brought forth at His command. (C. S. Lewis commented that a slow miracle is no easier to perform than an instant one.) The skeptic, of course, will challenge such credulity that accepts wholesale such stories, not realizing that what they swallow in a glass of water is a miracle in and of itself! The — Ravi Zacharias

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child
our own two eyes. All is a miracle. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense. — Stephen King

Oh, anywhere, driver, anywhere - it doesn't matter. Just keep driving.
It's better here in this taxi than it was walking. It's no good my trying to walk. There is always a glimpse through the crowd of someone who looks like him - someone with his swing of the shoulders, his slant of the hat. And I think it's he, I think he's come back. And my heart goes to scalding water and the buildings sway and bend above me. No, it's better to be here. But I wish the driver would go fast, so fast that people walking by would be a long gray blur, and I could see no swinging shoulders, no slanted hat.
Dorothy Parker, Sentiment, Harper's Bazaar, May 1933. — Dorothy Parker

What I notice, as a historian reading stories about so-called nature miracles, the walking on the water, or the miraculous catch of fishes, they're done especially for the insiders, for the disciples. Usually healings and exorcisms are done for people along the road, as it were. Jesus doesn't come on the water to save the fishing fleet from Capernaum, he comes on the water to save the disciples. It's a parable, dummy, it's a parable, don't you get it? If the leadership of the church takes off in a boat without Jesus, it will sink, it will get nowhere. — John Dominic Crossan

LIFE IN ALEXANDRA was exhilarating and precarious. Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful. Although the township did boast some handsome buildings, it could fairly be described as a slum, living testimony to the neglect of the authorities. The roads were unpaved and dirty, and filled with hungry, undernourished children scampering around half-naked. The air was thick with the smoke from coal fires in tin braziers and stoves. A single water tap served several houses. Pools of stinking, stagnant water full of maggots collected by the side of the road. Alexandra was known as "Dark City" for its complete absence of electricity. Walking home at night was perilous, for there were no lights, the silence pierced by yells, laughter, and occasional gunfire. So different from the darkness of the Transkei, which seemed to envelop one in a welcome embrace. — Nelson Mandela

Cloned chickens walking around without heads,
The food is contaminated, the water got lead in it.
Population control, make the babies sick,
All these RFID chips, RU-486 ...
This is a war against consciousness,
Controlling your soul, sort of a psychological dictatorship.
And we are on the front lines,
Guilty as charged if intellect is a crime. — Pharoahe Monch

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help? — Dan Barker

Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether - God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around. — Graham Greene

When sleepy, meditate with your eyes open wide. Stand in place for a few minutes or do walking meditation. If it's really bad, walk briskly or walk backward, splash some water on your face. Sleepiness is something we can respond to creatively. When — Jack Kornfield

You're like that single wild flower that grows from the crack in the pavement: miraculous growth with no water source or fertile soil. A person walking by would step around that flower to avoid crushing it. It's not like the field of wild flowers you tromp through carelessly, crushing them under your feet, knowing that the next day will bring a hundred more. — J.B. Salsbury

Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water,
Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light,
Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter ...
Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night.
Walking alone ... was it splendor, or what, we were bound with?
Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?
Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with
Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air. — F Scott Fitzgerald

He is not threatened by your circumstances or situation - He is a grave-robbing, water-walking, miracle-working, death-defying God, and He's able to pull you through anything you have to face in this life. — Perry Noble

The mountains are intimations of transcendence, which he is now free to pursue, and the walking writes messages in every cell of his body, telling him that he is not locked inside a cement box, nor in a water drum, but is moving forward. — Michael D. O'Brien

I just know that when I'm walking on the wafer-thin ice of happiness, I'm terrified, so terrified that I wish it was over, that I was already in the water. — Jo Nesbo

They were walking beside the stream and the Lion went before them: and he became so beautiful, and the music so despairing, that Jill did not know which of them it was that filled her eyes with tears.
Then Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. — C.S. Lewis

If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be. — Madeleine L'Engle

The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The shells had landed on the cobblestone road.
"Sonsofbitches," Wiseman muttered.
We looked up and grinned at each other.
"Here they come again!"
Sitting in an inch of water. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and clutched my elbows with my arms around my knees.
Three more shells came in, low and angry, and burst in the orchard.
"They're walking 'em towards us," I whispered.
I felt as if a giant with exploding iron fingers were looking for me, tearing up the ground as he came. I wanted to strike at him, to kill him, to stop him before he ripped into me, but I could do nothing. Sit and take it, sit and take it. The giant raked the orchard and tore up the roads and stumbled toward us in a terrible blind wrath as we sat in our hole with our heads between our legs and curses on our lips. — David Kenyon Webster

John felt grounded again. He remembered his favorite Bible story, the one about Peter getting out of the boat and walking on water. The big fisherman was walking along quite nicely until he looked at the waves and began to sink. As much as possible, John tried to live his life without looking at the waves. But when he did, when the lives of his grown children caused his faith to waver even a little, God always sent someone to illustrate the words of Christ: "You of little faith . . . why did you doubt?" John felt certain that in this, his most trying season yet, the Lord had sent Pastor Mark to fill that role. It was a certainty that kept his eyes where they belonged - off the waves and straight ahead to the outstretched arms of Jesus. — Karen Kingsbury

Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the tree-trunks. — J.M. Barrie

In God's eyes, walking on water is no more miraculous than the ability of hemoglobin to bond with oxygen inside a red blood corpuscle. — Deepak Chopra

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans. — Hermann Hesse

It was a lovely summer weather in the country, and the golden corn, the green oats, and the haystacks piled up in the meadows looked beautiful. The stork walking about on his long red legs chattered in the Egyptian language, which he had learnt from his mother. The corn-fields and meadows were surrounded by large forests, in the midst of which were deep pools. It was, indeed, delightful to walk about in the country. In a sunny spot stood a pleasant old farm-house close by a deep river, and from the house down to the water side grew great burdock leaves, so high, that under the tallest of them a little child could stand upright. The spot was as wild as the centre of a thick wood. In — Hans Christian Andersen

Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results. — Carl Von Clausewitz

I POINT OUT the embankment leading down to the water's edge. "All the way down to that walking trail," I say to Ringer. "And don't wait for me." She shakes her head, frowning. I lean in, keeping my expression as serious as I can. "I thought I had you with the zombie remark. One of these days, I'm going to get a smile out of you, Private." Very much not smiling. "I don't think so, sir." "You have something against smiling?" "It was the first thing to go." Then the snow and the dark swallow her. The rest of the squad follows. I can hear Teacup whimpering beneath her breath as Dumbo leads her off, going, "Run hard when it goes, Cup, okay? — Rick Yancey

Death Valley is the perfect flesh-grilling device, the Foreman Grill in Mother Nature's cupboard.

It's a big, shimmering sea of salt ringed by mountains that bottle up the heat and force it right back down on your skull. The average air temperature hovers around 125 degrees, but once the sun rises and begins broiling the desert floor, the ground beneath Scott's feet would hit a nice, toasty 200 degrees - exactly the temperature you need to slow roast a prime rib. Plus, the air is so dry that by the time you feel thirsty, you could be as good as dead; sweat is sucked so quickly from your body,you can be dangerously dehydrated before it even registers in your throat. Try to conserve water,and you could be a dead man walking.

But every July, ninety runners from around the world spend up to sixty straight hours running down the sizzling black ribbon of Highway 190, making sure to stay on the white lines so the soles of their running shoes don't melt. — Christopher McDougall

In the end, it is not by knowledge that we make our journeys but by hope and faith: hope that our walk will be worthy of our steps and faith that we are going somewhere. And only when we come to the end of our journeys do we truly understand that every step of the way we were walking on water. — Richard Paul Evans

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me. — Jack Gilbert

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation
every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water. — Dodie Smith

A post-petroleum world will necessitate walking long distances and exerting much more physical energy to accomplish even routine tasks than we are now accustomed to. Most of our bodies in current time are not up to the task. Yet preparing the body for living in a collapsing world is one of the most fundamental of preparations. Although we may not be able to store vast quantities of food or water, may not have our homes or property equipped as much as we would prefer in preparation for collapse, and may not have learned all the skills we would like to master, becoming present in our bodies and keeping them healthy and fit are factors over which we have control. — Carolyn Baker