When The Ship Is Sinking Quotes & Sayings

So, what is the opposite of a "helicopter parent?" I wonder. A subway parent? A Sinking ship parent? A hibernating bear? — Wendy Wunder

Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness. — Esther Perel

For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling to do so - I might, for example, have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they do well to convert to mammal facilities - it would not lie in my power or desire to reconvert a reluctant dinosaur. — William S. Burroughs

The sun burned like a fire ship on the water, sinking slowly till only a red smoke was left trailing up the sky. A fishing boat was headed into the harbor, black and small against the enormous west. Above its glittering wake a few gulls whirled like sparks which had gone out. — Ross Macdonald

His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship. — Edmund Wilson

You are not going to lose me," said Claybriar. "I don't want to put you through that."

"Is that a promise?" I said, and then immediately realized what I'd asked. I held my hand up in front of his mouth even as he drew breath to answer. "No," I said. "Don't bind yourself. Just do your best to stay alive; that's enough for me."

It was a little dizzying to realize that he'd been willing to promise me that he'd never leave me, and that unlike the others in my past he'd be bound to that promise. It was tempting, in a dark sort of way. But I wouldn't let him do it any more than I'd let him chain himself in the hold of a sinking ship. — Mishell Baker

Imagine a ship that is sinking and needs all the available power to run the pumps to drain out the rising waters. The first class passengers refuse to cooperate because they feel hot and want to use the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances. The second-class passengers spend all their time trying to be upgraded to first-class status. The boat sinks and the passengers all drown. That is where the present approach to climate change is leading. — Matthieu Ricard

If on a sinking ship out at sea, the moral law is to always help save women & children first ... Why can't we apply the same morals here in our nation? — Timothy Pina

oh, why am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid - ? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their level and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their attention. — F Scott Fitzgerald

They were galloping ... Bare level plain had taken the place of the scrub and they'd been cantering briskly, the foals prancing delightedly ahead, when suddenly the dog was a shoulder-shrugging streaking fleece, and as their mares almost imperceptibly fell into the long untrammelled undulating strides, Hugh felt the sense of change, the keen elemental pleasure one experienced too on board a ship which, leaving the choppy waters of the estuary, gives way to the pitch and swing of the open sea. A faint carillon of bells sounded in the distance, rising and falling, sinking back as if into the very substance of the day. Judas had forgotten; nay, Judas had been, somehow, redeemed. — Malcolm Lowry

In her unworldly voice she thanked them for finally understanding her. She reminded me of a female pirate captain alone on the deck of her sinking ship. — Raymond Radiguet

You sounded like someone who should be singing on a cruise ship. Halfway through your song, I wished the ship was sinking. — Simon Cowell

I would like to live to see the time when the men and woman of God - holy, separated and spiritually enlightened - walk out of the evangelical
church and form a group of their own; when they get off the sinking ship and let her go down in the brackish and worldliness and form a new ark to ride out the storm. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The cause of it all was a slight oversight, one small operation out of order. Sure, it was her fault, her responsibility, if it came to that, but from where I stood it seemed like a common enough mishap. A momentary lapse and - glitch! Could have happened to anyone. But not to her. A tiny crack in her head widened into a fissure, eventually becoming a gaping chasm. She wouldn't, she couldn't take another step. At a total loss for words, she froze in place. She was a sorry sight, a ship sinking slowly in the night sea. — Haruki Murakami

Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems - clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates - are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship. — Paul Hawken

When the ship is sinking and you're forced to choose sides, the new solution is to jump from island to island to island. You don't have to pick. — Shia Labeouf

The greatest of poems is an inventory.
Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it
in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to
look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy
one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the
solitary island. — G.K. Chesterton

With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard's chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, "Quarter! quarter! for God's sake!" Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis' commander, who called, "Do you ask for quarter?" Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: "I have not yet begun to fight!" Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis' mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard's quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis' mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When a storm was coming on, and they anticipated that a ship might sink, they swam before it, and sang most sweetly of the delight to be found beneath the water, begging the seafarers not to be afraid of coming down below. — Hans Christian Andersen

People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching. — R. Buckminster Fuller

There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me. — Anne Carson

God is at the helm even when you think your ship is sinking. Just keep trusting that the captain knows more about where you're heading than you do, and eventually you'll get where you need to be. — Kevin Alan Milne

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body ... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth. — George Orwell

None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship. — John Muir

We're all the same. We all want the same thing in life. Everybody going around like they know how to sail but there is no captain and we are all only passengers aboard the same sinking ship. — Donal O'Callaghan

What's one more torpedo in a sinking ship. — Lynn Dickey

Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold? or the gold him? — John Ruskin

Whenever you're struck by misfortune, either through an illness or an accident, the people around you suddenly change. There are those who scurry off the sinking ship, like rats, those who wait to see how the situation develops before making their next move, and finally those who remain loyal to their feelings and whose behavior doesn't change. Those friends are both rare and precious. He — Tahar Ben Jelloun

And you know what happens when a ship gets too many rats on board? It sinks. That's what.
I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way. — David Wong

It's all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters in the ship's kitchen. (Oct 4, 2011) — Wynne McLaughlin

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing. — Daniel Clowes

The ship is sinking The ship is sinking There's leak, there's a leak,in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who ore the ones that we kept in charge Killers, thieves, and lawyers God's Away, God's away God's away on Business — Tom Waits

He fell
from the sinking ship
to the roiling sea
of uncertainty,
into the hands
of the one mermaid
who knew exactly
how to save him. — Kirk Diedrich

A floating leaf has more to boast about than a sinking ship. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. — Tom Perrotta

If America is a ship, it looks a lot like it's sinking - financially, morally, spiritually. It's frightening. — Kirk Cameron

Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump. — Deb Caletti

This is going to be a lot for the Congress to swallow, even on the deck of a sinking ship. — Kenneth Eade

It sounds mercenary and it smacks of rats leaving the sinking ship. But get real, when everyone is bailing out, you don't want to be the last man standing. — Robbie Fowler

Let the Truth be known, no ship is unsinkable. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to sink her. I learned long ago that if you design how a ship'll sink, you can keep her afloat. I proposed all the watertight compartments and the double hull to slow these ships from sinking. In that way, you get everyone off. There's time for help to arrive, and the ship's less likely to break apart and kill someone while she's going down. — Thomas Andrews