“A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.”

Source: Silas Marner

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones." by George Eliot?

George Eliot300

English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880

Related quotes

“The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.”

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

“After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“Even with these dark eyes, a gift of the dark night
I go to seek the shining light.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"A Generation" [Yidai ren]

“Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark — a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Sick Love," lines 10–12, from Poems 1929.
Poems

“Reasoning with a drunkard is like
Going under water with a torch to seek for a drowning man.”

Thiruvalluvar book Tirukkuṛaḷ

Verse XCIII.9
Tirukkural

“On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up, diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"The South". Cf. "The Man on the Threshold", in The Aleph (1949)
tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Ficciones (1944)
Variant: On the floor, curled against the bar, lay an old man, as motionless as an object. The many years had worn him away and polished him, as a stone is worn smooth by running water or a saying is polished by generations of mankind.