“When we saw the most beautiful fishes of the sea, the dolphin and bonito, in pursuit of the flying fish, and when these forsook their native element to seek for shelter in air, the application to human nature was obvious. What empire is not like a tumultuous ocean, where the great in all the magnificence and pomp of power, continually persecute and contrive the destruction of the defenceless?”

— Georg Forster , book A Voyage Round the World

Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes.
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

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Georg Forster 6

German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, … 1754–1794

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“Now that man can fly through the air like a bird … and swim in the sea like a fish, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could just walk the earth like a man?”

Jack Paar (1918–2004) American author, radio and television comedian and talk show host

My Saber is Bent http://books.google.com/books?id=MO-mqER9TrsC&q=%22Now+that+man+can+fly+through+the+air+like+a+bird%22+%22and+swim+in+the+sea+like+a+fish+wouldn't+it+be+wonderful+if+he+could+just+walk+the+earth+like+a+man%22&pg=PA79#v=onepage (1961)

“A fish swims through the sea
While the sea is in a certain sense,
Contained within the fish!
Oh, what am I to think
Of what the writing of a thousand lifetimes
Could not explain
If all the forest trees were pens
And all the oceans - ink?”

Aaron Weiss

The Dryness and the Rain.
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“We are like fish
In this vast sea.
And Satan fishes
For you and me.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

"Monish" (translated in J. Leftwich. Golden Peacock. Sci-Art, 1939, p. 56.), 1888.

“Where is God? Where can I find him?" we ask. We don't realize that's like a fish swimming frantically through the ocean in search OF the ocean”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.”

Henry Beston book The Outermost House

p. 57: Ch. 3 http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=edhCAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+three+great+elemental+sounds+in+nature+are+the+sound+of+rain+the+sound+of+wind+in+a+primeval+wood+and+the+sound+of+outer+ocean+on+a+beach%22&pg=PA57#v=onepage
The Outermost House, 1928

“I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 1, Ch. 2 - p.31
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“Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.”

John Gierach (1946) American sportswriter

Source: Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders: A John Gierach Fly-Fishing Treasury

“There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

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Georg Forster 6

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