“When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where to-day it flows in shallows, like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, to-morrow it will flow richly and fully.”
And Quiet Flows the Don (1934)
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Mikhail Sholokhov 6
Soviet writer 1905–1984Related quotes

"St. Paul and Protestantism" (1870)

“In shallow shoals, English soles do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it.”
"Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love"
Paris (1928)

Freud and the Future (1937)
Context: The myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious. Certainly when a writer has acquired the habit of regarding life as mythical and typical there comes a curious heightening of his artistic temper, a new refreshment to his perceiving and shaping powers, which otherwise occurs much later in life; for while in the life of the human race the mythical is an early and primitive stage, in the life of the individual it is a late and mature one.
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Context: Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world. The philosopher Herakleitos said with profound truth that you cannot step twice into the same river. The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Third Part.
Third Part of Narrative

“Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.”
Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen (published 1655); alternately reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) as:
"Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb"
and titled The Silent Lover. Compare: "Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labi", (translated: "The deepest rivers flow with the least sound"), Q. Curtius, vii. 4. 13. "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep", William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iii. sc. i.