Watching Waves Quotes & Sayings

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? — Ralph Marston

At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. — Mary Shelley

When you read a book, you generate beta waves irrespective of the book's content. But if you look up from it, and start watching TV - it doesn't matter what the content of the program is - the beta waves disappear and you start processing alpha and theta waves. These are the same waves that you generate during meditation. Reading is primarily left hemisphere and watching television is primarily right hemisphere. Now how could that not have a major effect on our culture? — Leonard Shlain

I moved my arms through the water, feeling them float on the surface, watching the waves and wake that followed my gesture. Here was magic, I thought. Here was something holy. — Anita Diamant

Next you just relax and hold really still and concentrate on your breathing. You don't have to make a big deal about it. It's not like you're thinking about breathing, but you're not not thinking about it either. It's kind of like when you're sitting on the beach and watching the waves lapping up on the sand or some little kids you don't know playing in the distance. You're just noticing everything that's going on, both inside you and outside you, including your breathing and the kids and the waves and the sand. And that's basically it. — Ruth Ozeki

I dreamed of setting it up out here in front of where I am sitting now, on the tripod that I would have ordered too, and starting, taking my time, to focus on a curling line of water, a piece of the world indifferent to the fact that there is language, that there are names to describe things, and grammar and verbs. My eye, solitary, filled with its own history, is desperate to evade, erase, forget; it is watching now, watching fiercely, like a scientist looking for a cure, deciding for some days to forget about words, to know at last that the words for colours, the blue-grey-green of the sea, the whiteness of the waves, will not work against thefullness of watching the rich chaos they yield and carry. — Colm Toibin

Oh, Sam, this is Kate. Kate, meet Sam.' I wave my hand between the two of them, watching as Kate turns all angelic, putting her hand out to Sam, who grins before clasping it.

'Nice to meet you, Kate.' he says smoothly, maintaining his grin and running his free hand through his mousey waves.

'You too.' She arches a brow.

She's a brazen hussy! She's flirting with him. She giggles as Sam compliments her on her wild, red hair, their hands still linked. My phone declares a text. To escape the blatant flirting exchange going on in front of me, I pick it up and open the message with one eye closed.

There better be a GOOD f**king reason for you standing me up. Someone had better be dying. I'm going out of my f**king mind, lady. NO KISS — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God. Close your eyes and breathe your way beneath your troubles, the way a diver slips to that depth of stillness that is always waiting beneath the churning of the waves. Now, consider two things you love doing, such as running, drawing, singing, bird-watching, gardening, or reading. Meditate on what it is in each of these that makes you feel alive. Hold what they have in common before you, and breathing slowly, feel the spot of grace these dear things mirror within you. — Mark Nepo

In meditating, meditate on your own divinity. The goal of life is to be a vehicle for something higher. Keep your eyes up there between the world of opposites watching your 'play' in the world.Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves. — Joseph Campbell

Not I. not I. I can not acquiesce to your request-
I can not tie myself in the knots of your normalcy.
I want to run, run away with the wind-swept rain.
I want to kiss, the fervent lips of reciprocation.
I want to dance to the thunderous drums.
I can not be your quiet little ray of sun.
I have volcanoes in me. I have twilight's playfully cavorting.
I have springs and autumns boldly echoing my senses.
And I have roaring waves crashing upon the sands of my spirit.
I will not sit in supplication while you recite the mantras
that would change me into a quiet girl; a voiceless platitude.
I - to be true to myself - press against the windowpane
watching lightning, smiling, and feeling so awake.
The wildness in me not to be tamed."

From "The spark (of a Muse)" by Cheri Bauer — Cheri Bauer

It's as if I'm Finnick, watching images of my life flash by. The mast of a boat, a silver parachute, Mags laughing, a pink sky, Beetee's trident, Annie in her wedding dress, waves breaking over rocks. Then its over. — Suzanne Collins

Nothing makes you fell more alive than swimming in a cold ocean."
I beg to differ, I though wistuflly, watching as he let go of my arm and dived into the waves. Nothing makes me feel more alive than when you touch me, Travis. — Kate McCarthy

Just tell me i'm not dreaming?"
maybe you are," she said. "Probably you are."
I don't want to be. Clio, i can't do this on my own."
There was a bang.
We both jumped, turned towards the Roman bath. A clump of leaves swirled on the surface of the water in a slow spiral.
Is there something down there?"
Clio nodded. "Yes."
What is it?"
I don't k now," she said, watching the waters. "Something from down where it gets black."
There was another bang.
Little waves raced across the littery surface, lapping the bath's mouldy tiled sides.
Are you ready? This is it." Clio held me by the tops of my arms and gave me a smile which was meant to be strong and almost was.
What? Clee, what's going on?"
Bang. — Steven Hall

I Won't Fly Today

Too much to do, despite the snow,

which made all local schools close

their doors. What a winter! Usually,

I love watching the white stuff fall.

But after a month with only short

respites, I keep hoping for a critical

blue sky. Instead, amazing waves

of silvery clouds sweep over the crest

of the Sierra, open their obese

bellies, and release foot upon foot

of crisp new powder. The ski

resorts would be happy, except

the roads are so hard to travel

that people are staying home.

So it kind of boggles the mind

that three guys are laying carpet

in the living room. Just goes to

show the power of money. In less

than an hour, the stain Conner left

on the hardwood will be a ghost. — Ellen Hopkins

Every day since waking up in the hospital I've wanted to die, but watching that man sink below the waves, I feel something inside me rise up. A Dragon doesn't surrender. A Dragon fights fate. This is not some loud, roaring feeling. It feels more like someone blew on an ember and found a slight orang glow. I have to hang on to my life - however ruined and useless. Mama's voice comes floating to me, reciting one of her favorite sayings, "There is no catastrophe except death; one cannot be poorer than a beggar." I want - need - to do something braver and finer than dying. — Lisa See

It was one of those perfect nights, listening to the waves crash, feeling the warm summer breeze, watching the sun set over the ocean as the moon rose up in the sky. I looked out over the cliffs and I thought about the explorers who had sailed from places like this, what they'd accomplished, mapping the unknown world, charting our place in the universe. How many times had they failed and fallen down only to get back up and try again? How many times had they sailed out on an impossible voyage and made a successful return home? I sat there with Carola looking out over the endless horizon. It was strange, but I felt like everything was going to be okay. The end of my story was not yet written, and I still had the chance to make it extraordinary. — Mike Massimino

It's like watching a James Bond movie. Morpheus - in a black trench-coat-style blazer that hangs to his thighs, gray tweed pants, a dark gray vest, skinny red tie, and black pin-striped dress shirt - could pass for a punk-fae secret agent who's captured his villain. His thick blue waves touch his shoulders from under a gray tweed flat cap, and his wings drape down his back and across the floor, fluttering sporadically as he keeps his balance against Jeb's resistance. — A.G. Howard

... I will travel south by rail across a high range of mountains, watching the narrow, somber valleys, rough and ragged, open out on either side of me, and I will see mountain streams rise among the rocks, crashing down in waves to the foothills, plunging under bridges as our train rushes over -- and a chilly wind will howl from the darkness, and all of us who are passengers will shiver, and we will cling to each other, living by each other's breaths, but then dawn will vanquish the darkness ... — Matthew Cheney

There is a scene in the movie where Astrid and Hiccup fly on Toothless's back toward the island of Berk. The animation is intensely real, from the waves on the sea to wisps of wind blowing in the characters' hair. The feeling I get watching that scene is why I fly - just for that feeling. — Craig Ferguson

It's a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent. You never get tired of watching it. And no matter how rough the waves get, you're never bothered by the noise the water makes by the commotion of the surface - it never seems too loud, or too wild. — Banana Yoshimoto

One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear ...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here? — Mark Strand

She day-dreams just as I do. She is addicted to her solitude just as I am. She loves watching the rain-drops fall slowly on to the green leaves of an old guava tree just as I do. She loves drifting in time and time travel just as I do. She loves looking at the waves dashing against the rocks just as I do. — Avijeet Das

The waves rolled in like blue metal tubes carrying an egg white of foam on their peaks, then broke in a thousand glittering splinters and came up to the street with an oh of wonder and fear from those watching. — Elena Ferrante

The Arthashastra does not forget to warn the tyrant that he can never win. He may rise to eminence through ambition or the call of duty, but the more absolute his power, the more he is hated, and the more he is the prisoner of his own trap. The web catches the spider. He cannot wander at leisure in the streets and parks of his own capital, or sit on a lonely beach listening to the waves and watching the gulls. Through enslaving others he himself becomes the most miserable of slaves. — Alan W. Watts

Watching someone you love ... die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It's like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it's you reality, it's like watching sunlight fade from the sky, like watching death suck the one you love dry, and being powerless to stop it. You may as well try to stop the waves from rolling in, or the sun from rising.In the end, the waves will roll, the sun will set, and death will come. The only thing you have a choice in? How you deal with it ... when it does. — Rachel Van Dyken

You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight. — Martin Buber

It was such a lovely day too, and the sky and sea were so blue. They sat eating and drinking, gazing out to sea, watching the waves break into spray over the rocks beyond the old wreck. — Enid Blyton

This music ebbs and flows, irregular, sad. It reminds me, weirdly, of watching the ocean during a bad storm, the lashing, crashing waves and the spray of sea foam against the docks; the way it takes your breath away, the power and the hugeness of it.
That's exactly what happens as I listen to the music, as I come up over the final crest of hill, and the half-ruined barn and collapsing farmhouse fan out in front of me, just as the music swells, a wave about to break: The breath leaves my body all at once, and I'm struck dumb by the beauty of it. For a second it seems to me like I really am looking down at the ocean - a sea of people, writhing and dancing in the light spilling down from the barn like shadows twisting up around a flame. — Lauren Oliver

The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy ... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. — John Ruskin

I sit watching the brown oceanic waves of dry country rising into the foothills and I weep monotonously, seasickly. Life is not like the dim ironic stories I like to read, it is like a daytime serial on television. The banality will make you weep as much as anything else. — Alice Munro

There's not much that doesn't get me stoked. I love what I do and am so passionate about it that I get stoked on the simplest things - watching the sunrise, walking on the beach, going for a run through the forest or along the coast. One of my all time favorite things is surfing amazing waves with my family and best friends. — Sally Fitzgibbons

There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow. — Gretel Ehrlich

I was walking around legally blind. Now I have 20-20 vision. I can't believe I spent so many years blurry, but I think that coincides with how I was feeling. Now I notice if people are watching me, but I also smile right back if someone waves, which helps. — Nicole Kidman