Waterway Quotes & Sayings

We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. — Thomas W. Horton

Sooner or later the space program will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid. — Nathan Myhrvold

As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses, including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife, for the benefit of future generations of Americans. — Ron Kind

I find Suez astonishing for the first hour. It is a ditch in a desert, but a stunning one. The sensation of being hemmed in by huge ships, moving at a stately pace through a man-made waterway, is extraordinary. — Rose George

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. — Jack London

The time has also come to identify and preserve free-flowing stretches of our great rivers before growth and development make the beauty of the unspoiled waterway a memory. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Haida got quite talkative when it came to music [ ... ] but Tsukuru barely listened. Instead, a picture of Shiro performing the piece, a mental image, vivid and three-dimensional, welled up in his mind. As if those beautiful moments were steadily swimming back, through a waterway, against the legitimate press of time. — Haruki Murakami

Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system. — Jerry Costello

The conditions of suffering that exist today in our impoverished communities are not acceptable. The reflection of those conditions are less concerning to me. And I work everyday about changing the conditions. — Russell Simmons

The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. — Joseph Conrad

Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach. — Martina Navratilova

Make a decision today that, from now on, you are going to eliminate all the "if only's" from your life. — Brian Tracy

A huge fleet comprised of thousands of large naval and other seaworthy vessels from almost every nation on earth laid in wait off the coasts of the United States of America. The ships were stationary, poised and ready, positioned miles out to sea but still within plain view of every major port city, along every coastal waterway on all three sides of the great North American land mass. — J.A. Willoughby

Dark spruce frowned on either side of the frozen waterway. — Jack London

Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded — Joseph Conrad

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. — Joseph Conrad

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway, and it is not helpful for any nation to suggest that it would attempt to restrict traffic through the strait. — John C. Stennis

We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me. — Jeffrey Eugenides

My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee. — Pat Conroy

Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed. — Harlan Ellison

You might call it a miracle. Only one of us died this time." "Talenel," Kalak said. His was the only Blade unaccounted for. "Yes. He died holding that passage by the northern waterway." Kalak nodded. Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process. He would be back — Brandon Sanderson

And Francie whispered yeah in agreement. She was proud of that smell. It let her know that nearby was a waterway, which, dirty though it was, joined a river that flowed out to the sea. To her, the stupendous stench suggested far-sailing ships and adventure and she was pleased with the smell. — Betty Smith

Biologists have determined brookies to be indicators of ecosystem health and have been recently campaigning to get the word out. If brookies inhabit a stream, the odds are good that the waterway is in excellent condition. — Joseph Monninger

Try to visualize all the streams of human interaction, of communication. All those linking streams flowing in and between people, through text, pictures, spoken words and TV commentaries, streams through shared memories, casual relations, witnessed events, touching pasts and futures, cause and effect. Try to see this immense latticework of lakes and flowing streams, see the size and awesome complexity of it. This huge rich environment. This waterway paradise of all information and identities and societies and selves. — Steven Hall

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it. — Lloyd Alexander