“When people say to me, you must have a very strong mind to swim across the North Pole, or off Antarctica or on Mount Everest, I tell them that endurance swimming builds good mental strength.”

“I’ve been swimming for 25 years, and I don’t think there is one swim that I have done where someone didn’t say beforehand, ‘I don’t think it’s possible’ or ‘You’ll never make it’. If someone tells you that you can’t achieve your dream, don’t waste good time arguing. Walk away and do it.”

“… most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.”

“Climbing to the top demands strength, whether to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.”

“You can swim, too." he says. "Where did you learn that in District Twelve?"
"We have a very big bathtub.”

“The essence of striving to the far-off worlds is contained in the assimilation of a consciousness of our life in them. The possibility of life on them becomes for our consciousness, as it were, a channel of approach. Indeed, this consciousness must be dug through as a channel. People are able to swim, yet a considerable portion of them do not swim. Such an obvious fact as the far-off worlds completely fails to attract humanity. It is time to cast this seed into the human brain.”

“Acquiring carnal knowledge is like swimming in the sea … The sea's so beautiful to look at, so wonderful to swim in, but you must never bathe unless it's safe. People so often drown in the sea and some coasts are so very dangerous, … like the Coast of Gower.”

“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.”

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”

“When you grow to become visible in the world / and build a nest / above your head / there are times when you fly up there / and it is light and swims in the air”