“i have to cross the river of extreme awkwardness in order to get to the paradise on the other side.”
Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
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David Levithan 447
American author and editor 1972Related quotes
“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.”
Source: The World According to Garp
“I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.”
" Tower Of Song http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/tower+of+song_20082815.html" - Tower of Song with U2, Video http://vimeo.com/13286028
I'm Your Man (1988)
Context: p>I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.
I loved you, baby, way back when.
And all the bridges are burning that
We might have crossed and I feel so close to everything that we've lost.
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again.Now I bid You farewell, I don't when I'll be back.
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track.
But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone.
I'll speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower Of Song</p
“Crossing the river by feeling the stones”
摸着石头过河 (mō zhe shítou guòhé)
Meaning: proceed gradually, by experimentation.
Traditional saying, first used in Chinese Communist context by Chen Yun, 1980 December 16, then popularized by Deng 1984 October. Frequently misattributed to Deng.
Misattributed or apocryphal
Source: Henry He, Dictionary of the Political Thought of the People's Republic of China, Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-31550044-7, p. 287 https://books.google.com/books?id=XSi3DAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA287&dq=%22cross%20the%20river%20by%20feeling%20the%20stones%22&pg=PA287#v=onepage
Source: Evan Osnos, Boom Doctor https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/boom-doctor, New Yorker, October 11, 2010:
The strategy, as Chen Yun put it, was “crossing the river by feeling for the stones.” (Deng, inevitably, received credit for the expression.)
Source: Chinese land reform: A world to turn upside down https://www.economist.com/briefing/2013/10/31/a-world-to-turn-upside-down, The Economist, 2013 October 31
Liu Hongzhi, who oversees the scheme, quotes a famous phrase often attributed to Deng, though in fact coined by a colleague: “We are crossing the river by feeling the stones.”
“All the bridges in the world won't save you if there is no other side to cross to”
World Upon Your Shoulders
Song lyrics, Diorama (2002)
“Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side.”
"The Pasho", Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2004
“Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.”
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 161
Ko Wen-je (2019) cited in " China's political formulas disallow ROC existence: MAC http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201901010018.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 1 January 2019.