Quotes about boat (376 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 8

Personality

“This is the archetypal suburban-conservative nightmare — anonymous hordes of leftist boat-rockers viciously assaulting the champion of the decent people, who is just a really nice guy given to tending his lawn and minding his own business. Being "nice" is a central part of the Brooks yuppie's guilt-proofing self-image rationale; so long as you're the kind of guy who lets people merge on highways, stands politely in line at Starbucks, doesn't put garish Christmas decorations on his lawn and pays his taxes, you're not really doing anything wrong. It gets a little tiring after a while, hearing people who vote for wars tell you how nice they are.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006)

War , People , Guy , Business

“How old now?'
'Thirty. Downhill to the dark boat across the Styx. Probably be sick over the side in Charon's ferry too…”

Lindsey Davis book The Silver Pigs

The Silver Pigs

“As they say on my own Cape Cod, a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both partners, without domination or unfair advantage. Together we have been partners in adversity — let us also be partners in prosperity.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt

Partnership

“One of my first jobs was on a lesbian cruise. I was the ship comedian for the Lesbian Love Boat.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Love

“Book #10: A Book of Travellers' Tales. As it hits the water its pages detach themselves from the covers, which sink… and the pages form themselves into small paper boats that float away on the tide.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Prospero's Books

Books , Travel , Water

“The boat people, the boat people, in getting out what got in, getting out of South Vietnam, that so called communist paradise and that’s to show enough to the whole world that the communist regime doesn't work in South Vietnam. And maybe if we are in fight now inside in…in…South Vietnam, we will have certainly the support of the general, of the majority, of the population. We never had that thing before. But now, if there is some, something, you know, moving over there, I am almost sure that we have I am sure that we have, the support, the majority of the population.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Political resentment in contemporary Vietnam
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

People , World , Support , Fight

“In Singapore, house renovation had only one goal — to convey wealth. He had seen houses that appeared huge, with a vast amount of road frontage, only to pass by another day using another route and discover that the same house was narrower than a long boat.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 9

Appearance , Housing , Wealth

“Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XV
Sunday Up the River (1865)

Health , Horse , Sea , Wealth

“Carter in the office, Take notes when I'm talkin', Smooth as a cruise boat floats when I'm walkin.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Back on My Grizzy
Official Mix tapes, Da Drought 3 (2007)

“Neil Cavuto: …your campaign has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist in West Palm Beach. And your campaign had indicated you have no intention to return it. What are you going to do with that?
Ron Paul: It is probably already spent. Why give it back to him and use it for bad purposes?
Neil Cavuto: …this Don Black who made the donation, and who ran a site called "Stormfront, White Pride Worldwide," now that you know it, now that you're familiar after the fact, you still would not return it?
Ron Paul: Well, if I spent his money and I took the money that maybe you might have sent to me and donate it back to him, that does not make any sense to me. Why should I give him money to promote his cause?
Neil Cavuto: …Hillary Clinton has had to do this, a number of other candidates have had to do this. Do you think that just is a bad practice?
Ron Paul: I think it is pandering. I think it is playing the political correctness… What about the people who get donations, want to get special interests from the military industrial complex? They put in — they raise, bundle their money, and send millions of dollars in there. And they want to rob the taxpayers. That is the real evil … that buys influence in government. And this is, to me, the corruption that should be corrected… you are missing the whole boat — the whole boat, because it is the immorality of government, it's the special interests in government, it's fighting illegal wars…
Neil Cavuto: All right.
Ron Paul: …and financing, and taxing the people, destroying the people through inflation, and undermining this prosperity of the country.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, December 19, 2007 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317536,00.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrRtZaG63o8
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , War , People , Thinking

“A piece of knowledge about boat-building, about whose correctness Crusoe has no doubts at all, will not be seen as a hunch and will be valued according to Menger's Law. It may be said that Crusoe is well aware that he possesses this kind of information; he will deploy and value it in the same way as he may be imagined to deploy and value other resources he believes are definitely at his disposal. But concerning Crusoe's hunches and his visions in the face of a changing, uncertain environment, it cannot be said at all that Crusoe knows he has a hunch or a vision of the future. He does not act by deliberately utilizing his hunch about the future; instead, he finds that his actions reflect his hunches…In other words, it turns out, the essence of entrepreneurial vision, and what sets it apart from knowledge as a resource, is reflected in Crusoe's lack of self-consciousness concerning it…Crusoe may…gradually come to be aware of his vision. When he does, that vision ceases to be entrepreneurial and comes to be a resource. Moreover, Crusoe's realization that he possesses this definite information resource may itself be entrepreneurial. As soon as he 'knows' that he possesses an item of knowledge, that item ceases to correspond to entrepreneurial vision; instead, as with all resources, it is Crusoe's belief that he has the resources at his disposal that may now constitute his entrepreneurial hunch.”

Israel Kirzner (1930) American economist

Israel Kirzner, (1979: 168-169); as cited in: " Israel Kirzner's Entrepreneurship http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/subjecti/workpape/kirz_ent.pdf" by the Constitution Society, May 31, 2004

Law , Way , Imagination , Knowledge

“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
with Dirce in the boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,
That he is old and she a shade.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

Forgetting

“I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.... and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs... Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter, 23 August 1909 to Maurice de Vlaminck, in Lettres à Vlaminck, p. 205; as cited and translated in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by F. Whitlum-Cooper and Cleo Nisse http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 10 - note 8

Money , Art , Happiness

“We are not able to determine, with any certainty, whether those troops, that have taken post above King's Bridge, are the same troops or not that were in or about Haerlem. Several days past they clisap-peared from below, all at once, and some little time after about fifty boats, full of men, were seen going up towards Hunt's Point, and that evening the enemy were discovered at Fort Independence. We suspect them to be the same troops that were engaged in the Sunday skirmish.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Men , Time , Past

“And, on the other hand, the Greek Leonidas choking the pass against the Persian torrent, the Italian Galileo holding fast his scientific faith in the teeth of the Church of Rome, Robert Small steering his bold boat under the guns of slavery straight towards the flag of freedom, Abraham Lincoln patiently saving civil liberty, are all, in their times and countries, soldiers of the true cross, heroes and martyrs of the Good Fight.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Faith , Freedom , Time , Fight

“It was as we were sailing out onto the wide chinchilla sea that I noticed how every chinchilla looked exactly like Marlboro, the chinchilla I had owned as a ten-year-old and which I had put inside a popcorn machine to see what would happen. Then the boat ran aground on the biggest chinchilla ever.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Fog Juice, Chapter Two

Sea

“Each year she taught him the names of the flowers in her language and in his, and from one year to the next he could not even remember the English. For nearly thirty years Sabbath had been exiled in these mountains, and still he could name hardly anything. They didn't have this stuff where he came from. All these things growing were beside the point there. He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime - the light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up they had the Atlantic. You could touch with your toes where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house. The porch. The screens. The icebox. The tub. The linoleum. The broom. The pantry. The ants. The sofa. The radio. The garage. The outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged. In summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazling light; in September, the hurricanes; in January, the storms. They had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December. And then January. And then again January, no end to the stockpile of Januaries, of Mays, of Marches. August, December, April - name a month, and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He had grown up on endlessness and his mother - in the beginning they were the same thing. His mother, his mother, his mother, his mother, his mother… and then there was his mother, his father, Grandma, Morty, and the Atlantic at the end of the street. The ocean, the beach, the first two streets in America, then the house, and in the house a mother who never stopped whistlîg until December 1944. If Morty had come alive, if the endlessness had ended naturally instead of with the telegram, if after the war Morty had started doing electrical work and plumbing for people, had become a builder at the shore, gone into the construction business just as the boom in Monmouth County was beginning…Didn't matter. Take your pick. Get betrayed by the fantasy of endlessness or by the fact of finitude. No, Sabbath could only have wound up Sabbath, begging for what he was begging, bound to what he was bound, saying what he did not wish to stop himself from saying.”

Philip Roth book Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

War , People , Mountain , Star

“Agreeably to the request of the House of Representatives, communicated in their resolution of the 16th instant, I proceed to state under the reserve therein expressed, information received touching an illegal combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the Union, and a military expedition planned by them against the territories of a power in amity with the United States, with the measures I have pursued for suppressing the same….
But by information received yesterday I learn that on the 22d of December, Mr. Burr descended the Cumberland with two boats merely of accommodation, carrying with him from that State no quota toward his unlawful enterprise. Whether after the arrival of the proclamation, of the orders, or of our agent, any exertion which could be made by that State, or the orders of the governor of Kentucky for calling out the militia at the mouth of Cumberland, would be in time to arrest these boats, and those from the falls of the Ohio, is still doubtful.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Special Message to Congress on the Burr Conspiracy, declaring his former Vice President an illegal conspirator and a fugitive from justice (22 January 1807)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Peace , Communication , Learning , Time

“The first application of this principle [of the division of labor] must have been made in a very early stage of society; for it must soon have been apparent that more comforts and conveniences could be acquired by one man restricting his occupation to the art of making bows, another to that of building houses, a third boats, and so on. This division of labor Into trades was not, however, the result of an opinion that the general riches of the community would be increased by such an arrangement: but it must have arisen from the circumstances, of each individual so employed discovering that he himself could thus make a greater profit of his labour than by pursuing more varied occupations.”

Charles Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

Source: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832/1841, p. 170. Ch 19. "On the division of labour"

Art , Communication , Housing

“I own it gave my picturesque fancies at first a shock, to hear of a steam-boat on Loch Katrine; but I was wrong. Nothing could be a more decisive proof of the increased communication between England and Scotland — and communication is the regal road to improvement of every kind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Communication , Decision

“When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure it was a great soft mattress.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. IV
The Open Boat (1894)

Suffering , Water , Sea

“Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose…. I don’t agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you’re overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That’s not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Wall Street DVD Director’s Commentary (2000)

Guy , Game , Help , Sea

“The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Oceanic http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/OCEANIC/Complete/Oceanic.html, ch. 1
Fiction, Oceanic and Other Stories (2000)

“Before the conquest, the Filipinos had a literature written in characters of their own, and its manifestation in verse constituted of maxims, proverbs, boat-songs, nuptial-songs, war songs, love-songs, and the like.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As a quote in Quirino & Hilario's "Short History of Tagalog Literature" in Thinking for Ourselves. Manila Oriental Co. 1924, p. 56-57.

Love , War , Literature

“I wrote "Eat It" because I wanted to buy a banana boat for Christmas. It worked.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

I Love the 80's 3D, VH1, 1985.

Christmas

“No agony, no ecstacy, no pleasure and no pain —
so exquisitely uninteresting you drive your wife insane
The TV is your oracle, the newspapers your guide
and your shiny little vehicle is your passion and your pride
You've done the same things every day for nigh on forty years
and in your ludicrous routines you hide your worthless fears
On the blandest boat in Boredom you are captain of the crew
and every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you.”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"Every Time I Eat Vegetables...", from Cautionary Tales for Dead Commuters (1985)

Pain , Pleasure , Fear , Thinking

“I don't believe everything Bill tells me about his players. Had they been that good, they'd not only have won the European Cup but the Ryder Cup, the Boat Race and even the Grand National.”

Jock Stein (1922–1985) Scottish footballer and manager

On Bill Shankly http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/lfc_story/a_quotes.shtml

“So she drank to the point of suicide, because a life which not only lacked love, but couldn't even catch a little indifference, like a net to contain air, was intolerable; because she hadn't a single god, or goddamn thing to do, or anything she could look back on as done—completed or accomplished—only one pleasureless screw which produced an ingrate and a monster upon whom she nevertheless pinned her hopes with exactly the same chance for success as anyone would who tried to drive a nail into a passing cloud—a son to whom she threw her soul at considerable peril, like a stone in a paper boat.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

pgs 136-137
The Tunnel (1995)

Love , Life , God , Hope

“When rowan leaves are dank and rusting
And rowan berries red as blood,
When in my palm the hangman's thrusting
The final nail with bony thud,
When, over the foul flooding river,
Upon the wet grey height, I toss
Before my land's grim looks, and shiver
As I swing here upon the cross,
Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches
My dying sight to space remote;
I see upon the river’s reaches
Christ sailing to me in a boat.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.

Christ

“My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore.
Here's a double health to thee!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

To Thomas Moore http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-TomMoore.htm, st. 1 (1817).

Health , Sea

“During my cadet years, West Point was still a military cloister, linked tenuously to the outside world by the West Shore Railway, the excursion boats on the Hudson, and a winding road leading westward into New Jersey. A cadet normally entered the Academy in July and never left it on vacation until his second Christmas. In the meantime, he led a completely regimented life, arising at six, going to bed at ten and rarely having a moment without a duty to occupy it.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 25

Life , World , Christmas

“He’s not really a religious man, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered on. The churches pay his salary, so he doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat with unorthodox rumours.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 28 (p. 441)

“But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 97

“It is very easy to sail along with the majority -- easy to sail the way the boats are going -- easy to float with the stream; but when you come to swim against the tide, with the men on the shore throwing rocks at you, you will get a good deal of exercise in this world.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Men , World , Way , Exercises

“I saw the loose tiller jolt hard to the side as the boat began to spin.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 102

“Papa told her about a Lohengrin performance. It was just before his first entrance. He was ready to step into the boat, which, drawn by a swan, was to take him on-stage. Somehow the stagehand on the other side got his signals mixed, started pulling, and the swan left without Papa. He quietly turned around and said: "What time's the next swan?"”

Walter Slezak (1902–1983) actor

That story has since become a classic in operatic lore.
Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), p. 210

Time

“I've found it! I've found the Hunley. (Best selling author Nancy Roberts writes: Filled with excitement, and a certain lack of caution, Spence shot up to the surface, shouting to the men in the boat, 'I've found it! I've found the Hunley. The location of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley (first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship) had been a mystery for over one hundred years. In 1978, the Hunley was placed on the United States National Register of Historic Places as a result of Spence's discovery. The wreck was raised in 2000. Her crew was still inside.)”

E. Lee Spence (1947) German anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, historian, photojournalist and academic

from Ghosts From the Coast by Nancy Roberts, University of North Carolina Press, (Chapel Hill & London, 2001, , p. 94.

Men , History

“The Weinreichs have laid out, with numerical precision, the outlines of a world, of a fantastic land in which it would behoove you to know how to say, in Yiddish,
250. What is the flight number?
1372. I need something for a tourniquet.
1379. Here is my identification.
254. Can I go by boat/ferry to----?”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

A Yiddish Pale Fire

World

“Engvall and his buddy get off a boat with a big string of bass.
On-looker: You catch all them fish?
Engvall: Nope, talked 'em into givin' up. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign Reloaded (2003)
Here's Your Sign

Fish

“To a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat — especially if the man on the boat is with his wife.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

Time

“Better off? The point is illustrated by the great African American boxer Muhammad Ali. In the early 1970s Muhammad Ali fought for the heavyweight title against George Foreman. The fight was held in the African nation of Zaire; it was insensitively called the "rumble in the jungle." Ali won the fight, and upon returning to the United States, he was asked by a reporter, "Champ, what did you think of Africa?" Ali replied, "Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!" There is a characteristic mischievous pungency to Ali's remark, yet it also expresses a widely held sentiment. Ali recognizes that for all the horror of slavery, it was the transmission belt that brought Africans into the orbit of Western freedom. The slaves were not better off—the boat Ali refers to brought the slaves through a horrific Middle Passage to a life of painful servitude—yet their descendants today, even if they won't admit it, are better off. Ali was honest enough to admit it.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 8. Most likely a misattribution. A Newsweek article at the time of the match attributed the quote "Thank God our grandpappies caught that boat!" to George Foreman's manager Dick Sadler. "It Takes a Heap of Salongo", Newsweek (September 23, 1974), p. 72.

Life , God , Pain , Thinking

“We never had any use for Taylor or any of the efficiency or scientific management crowd. They never realized that human toil was the last thing in the world you had to be efficient about; the only way to be really efficient is to eliminate it entirely, and this would have been heresy to any of the Taylor, Gant, Barth, Cook efficiency crowd.
It is sad to contemplate that men of the technical ability of the names mentioned in this paragraph were so lame in their thinking and social outlook that they missed the boat so completely. Who in hell wants to be efficient with a shovel, and what sense would there be even if you succeeded? They should have had their heads opened with a shovel; it might have been more effective.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Source: History and Purpose of Technocracy, 1965, p. 7-8

Men , World , Sadness , Way

“(On his Emmy nomination) I am humbled by the nomination. I got to work with a cast and writers made up of geniuses. The good news is I can finally realize my life long dream and buy my wife a solid gold speed boat.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"Stars React to Emmy Nominations," Access Hollywood (2006) http://www.accesshollywood.com/news/ah814.shtml
2006

Life , Dreams , Speed

“I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing … Silence … Waves.
— Nothing happens? Or Has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

"Oceans", as translated by Robert Bly; quoted in Opening Our Moral Eye : Essays, Talks & Poems Embracing Creativity & Community (1996) by Mary Caroline Richards.

Life , Feeling , Silence

“The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below. If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 111

“Build me a tomb for when I die, build it 50,000 feet into the sky… Build me a boat I want to discover America, build me a boat to take me to the edge of the seven seas, build me a boat and you can sail along with me, we’ll spread our money, power, religion and disease. …Who are they to say that we own nothing and our lives have gone astray?”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Wood and Nails"
Blue Walls and The Big Sky (1995)

Money , Disease , Religion , Sea

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men in a Boat

Source: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 3.

Love , Life , Pleasure , Dogs

“We finally saw the sea, the horizonless sea – how odd for a mountaindweller. We saw the beautiful boats that sail on it. It is too inviting, one feels carried away, one would leave to see the whole world.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from Courbet's letter to his parents (1841); as quoted in Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century, Howard F. Isham, publisher: Peter Lang, 2004, Chapter 'Waterworlds', p. 307
reporting his experiences of a boat-trip with a friend over the Seine to the port of Le Havre; he made also a sketchbook of this trip in the Summer of 1841
1840s - 1850s

World , Beauty , Feeling , Sea

“The day after your departure I started a new painting at Le Cours-la-Reine, in the afternoon in a glow of sun, and another in the morning by the water below St. Paul's Church. These two canvases are fairly well advanced, but I still need one session in fine weather without too much mist to give them a little firmness. Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog... Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog, another, same effect, from my window, the same motif in the rain, several sketches in oils, done on the quays near the boats; the next day it was impossible to go on, everything was confused, the motifs no longer existed; one has to realize them in a single session.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter from Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 42
1880's

Departure , Water , Change , Sun

“He [Steve Jobs] showed me the boat he was working on … and talked about how he's looking forward to being on it, even though we both knew there was a good chance that wouldn't happen.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

cbsnews.com http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-on-steve-jobs-we-grew-up-together/
July 2013

Chance

“Jumped in the river, what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moonful of stars and astral cars
And all the figures I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"Pyramid Song"
Lyrics, Amnesiac (2001)

Fear , Angels , Cars , Star

“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

The Doctrine Of Survival And Doctor Ethics (1992)

Love , Life , Hate , People

“My picture [A Boat Passing a Lock, 1823-6] is liked at the [Royal] Academy, indeed it forms a decided feature and its light can not be put out. Because it is the light of nature — the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry — painting or anything else… my execution annoys most of them and all the scholastic ones – perhaps the scarifies I make for 'lightness' and 'brightness' is too much but these things are the essence of Landscape.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Letter to Rev. John Fisher, 1824, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 288
1820s

Nature , Light , Painting

“Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Cæsar and his fortunes in your boat.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Parallel Lives, Caesar

Fear

“The only difference between miracles and magic is who does it. A boat may be considered a ship if it’s big enough. When a rich man is neurotic, we call him eccentric. When a V. I. P. is murdered, it’s an assassination. When a god performs magic, he’s working miracles. If Moses or the Pharaoh turned a staff into a snake, that’s magic. If God does the exact same trick, that’s a miracle.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

God

“What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; — and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

World , Law , Nature , Light

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money , Family , Way , Feeling

“The army and navy had plenty of bad powder and worthless vessels in fact, material for half a dozen powder-boats if necessary. I don't know whether the general claimed the powder-boat as an original idea, but there is nothing new under the sun, and such a means of attack has been employed before.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 269

Idea , Sun

“I have long argued that we need to reopen Alcatraz to house government criminals, and let tourists on excursion boats in San Francisco Bay pay to chum the water with meat with an expired sell-by date that would otherwise have to be discarded.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"It Has to Cost Them Something," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle505-20090208-02.html 8 February 2009.

Water , Housing

“Honour the brave who sleep
Where the lost “Titanic” lies,
The men who knew what a man must do
When he looks Death in the eyes.“Women and children first,”—
Ah, strong and tender cry!
The sons whom women had borne and nursed,
Remembered,—and dared to die.The boats crept off in the dark:
The great ship groaned: and then,—
O stars of the night, who saw that sight,
Bear witness, These were men!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Heroes of the "Titantic" (November 9, 1912).

Death , Women , Men , Children

“A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. I
The Open Boat (1894)

Way , Sea

“The teacher offers guidance here and there, but the primary factor, the driving force, in your relationship and work together is the student's own commitment and desire to learn. Teaching is like sailing: The wind and the sails give the boat its motion. Your role (as a teacher) is to steer and guide.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Learning , Teachers

“At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered, at two leagues' distance; they took in sail and remained under the square-sail lying to till day, which was Friday, when they found themselves near a small island, one of the Lucayos, called in the Indian language Guanahani. Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral bore the royal standard, and the two captains each a banner of the Green Cross, which all the ships had carried; this contained the initials of the names of the King and Queen each side of the cross, and a crown over each letter Arrived on shore, they saw trees very green many streams of water, and diverse sorts of fruits.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Variant translation: At two hours after midnight appeared the land, at a distance of two leagues. They handed all sails and set the treo, which is the mainsail without bonnets, and lay-to waiting for daylight Friday, when they arrived at an island of the Bahamas that was called in the Indians' tongue Guanahani.
As translated in Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1963) by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 64
Journal of the First Voyage

People , Lying , Tree , Water

“It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom.”

Gerald Bullett (1893–1958) British writer

Gerald Bullett, "Walt Whitman" in", in Alfred Barratt Brown, Great Democrats, 1934 (reprinted by Spokesman Books, 2013).

Religion , Falseness

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

Music , Way , Winter , Past

“The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations of Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and the canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 86.

People , Family , Food , Dogs

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men , Mountain , Hell , Drink

“Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes – King Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane are larger than life: men of mighty thews., hot passions, and indomitable will, who easily dominate the stories through which they stride. In fiction, the difference between a writer who is a natural storyteller and one who is not is like the difference between a boat that will float and one that will not. If the writer has this quality, we can forgive many other faults; if not, no other virtue can make up for the lack, any more than gleaming paint and sparkling brass on a boat make up for the fact that it will not float.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

~ L. Sprague de Camp, Conan of the Isles, "Introduction", 1968
About

Life , Men , Forgiveness , Nature

“I'd love to get you on a slow boat to China,
All to myself, alone.
Get you and keep you in my arms evermore,
Leave all your lovers weeping on the far away shore.”

Frank Loesser (1910–1969) American songwriter

Song On a Slow Boat to China.

Love , Lovers

“We came from the sea originally, now we're going back in it. Don't go in it, unless you're in a boat.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 3
On Biology

Sea

“It's in human nature to mention any personal connection when offering solidarity, so I shall just briefly say that on my first visit to India, in 1980, I stayed at the Taj Mahal in Bombay, visited the "Gateway of India" and took a boat to Elephanta Island, toured the magnificent railway station, had my first diwali festival at Juhu beach, and paced the amazing corniche that was still known by some—after its dazzling string of lights—as "Queen Victoria's necklace." Wonderful though some of the 19th-century British architecture can be, Bombay is quintessentially an Indian achievement, and an achievement of all its peoples from the Portuguese-speaking Catholic Goans to the Zoroastrian Parsis.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2008, "Our Friends in Bombay", 2008

People , Nature , Light , Personality

“We got email today from an LGF reader who was browsing the Lexis research system and discovered that anti-American, anti-capitalist icon Noam Chomsky has embarrassingly capitalist tastes; among other expensive property he owns a 36,155 square foot home near Cambridge, a 13,503 square foot vacation home, and four boats. And we won’t even mention the cars. Teaching kids to hate their own country seems to pay quite well.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

July 23, 2002 http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=3577&only

Hate , Cars , Home , Country

“Ah this scene was of brief duration, but, though a simple and humble affair, it impressed me more than anything of the kind I ever witnessed. What a fine picture that would have made Mr. Lincoln landing from a ship-of-war's boat, an aged negro on his knees at his feet, and a dozen more trying to reach him to kiss the hem of his garments! In the foreground should be the shackles he had broken when he issued his proclamation giving liberty to the slave.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 296

War , Age , Kiss

“The Coalition will end the waste, repay the debt, stop the big new taxes and, above all else, stop the boats.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2010

“When my grandfather was born there were barely two thousand people living in the capital; in my own childhood there were nearly five thousand. In grandfather's childhood the only people who counted were a few government officials and a few foreign merchants, mainly Jews from Schleswig and Holstein who spoke Low German and called themselves Danes... The rest of the town's inhabitants were cottagers who went out to the fishing and sometimes owned a small share in a cow, or had a few sheep. They had little rowing-boats, on which they could sometimes hoist a sail.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

People , Fish , Childhood

“The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds—
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Liner She's a Lady, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

War , Sea

“People say, "Dinosaurs on the Ark? Now, Hovind, they are kind of big aren't they?" The big ones were big, but the little ones were little. You see Noah was 600 years old when he built that big boat. He was probably smart enough to know that you do not have to bring the biggest dinosaurs. You bring two babies, be sure to bring a pink one and a blue one that will be important later, okay. There are all kinds of reasons for bringing babies on the ark. You bring babies because they are smaller. The biggest dinosaur egg is smaller than a football. You bring babies because they weigh less, they eat less, they sleep a lot more, and they are a lot tougher. Do you know that when kids fall they bounce and then they get up and keep running? Adults fall down and break or they lay there a while. Plus you bring babies because after the flood they will live longer to produce the offspring. And that's the whole reason that you are bringing them. Why on earth would you bring big elephants on the ark? That would be stupid, for multiple reasons. Why would you bring a big giraffe? Just bring babies of everything.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

People , Stupidity , Sleep , Football

“Ah, well… hell is full of burning boats, did you know that, Nadir? I daresay that's what makes it so bloody hot.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Erik (p. 289)
Phantom (1990)

Hell

“Down we go,” said Paddy. “Now pray to Saint Anthony if you be a good Catholic—”
“I'm not,” snapped Fay, “and if you'll give more mind to the boat and less to religion we’ll gain by it.”

Jack Vance book The Five Gold Bands

Source: The Five Gold Bands (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 131)

Religion

“Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive, and way too conventional to use all of those people standing around in the background wearing leather and chains and waiting hopefully for their cues. This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/boat-trip-2003 of Boat Trip (21 March 2003)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

People , Way , Chance , Waiting

“Neoconservatives are the boat people of the McGovern revolution.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

People

“Del Piero is known for his sense of humour. He once joked that if Lippi does not convoke him to the World Cup in Germany, he would "run him over with his car and sink his damn boat."”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Tiscali.it http://sport.tiscali.it/articoli/06/01/20/del_piero_fiorello.html
Attributed

World , Cars , Sense

“We Are All in the Same Boat.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

spiegel.de, june 3, 2013 http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spiegel-interview-with-angela-merkel-on-euro-crisis-and-arms-exports-a-903401.html
2013

“What are the odds that Dan Rather would have accepted such patently phony documents from, say, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

C-BS
2004-09-16
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2004/09/16/c-bs/page/full/
2004

Truth

“Olaf: I'm a genius! I've solved all of our problems! Look!
Violet: Renaming the boat doesn't solve any of our problems.”

Daniel Handler book The End

The End (2006)

Problem

“Oh, early Kandinsky.. [stuck her early]. Well no, they had that at the Art Institute in Chicago, don't forget. See, everybody, to do 'modern art' then [New York, mid-forties], seemed to me, when you were going 'modern' [both chuckle], it was Picasso. I mean, everybody. But I avoided that like the plague. I thought... I loved Picasso, but it just wasn't for me... Well, I don't! I have some of those [early] paintings from LeLavandou - they're in storage - and from Mexico. They were Expressionist landscapes, or boats on the beach or something like that, which I still do. Sort of going abstract, going towards..”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

Love , Art , Painting , Forgetting

“I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich lege die Ruder ein und fahre endlos, wie einem ewigen Gestade zu. Mondlicht spielt blau auf meinem Segel. Mein Nachen gleitet in einen sicheren Hafen. Nur leise schlagen die Wellen an meinen Kahn. Die tiefste Stille ist um mich, und meine Seele spannt eine goldene Brücke zu einem Stern.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Soul , Star , Light , Silence

“I know what Dan Quayle means when he says it's best for children to have two parents. You bet it is! And it would be nice for them to have trust funds, too. We can't all be born rich and handsome and lucky. And that's why we have a Democratic Party. My family would still be isolated and destitute if we had not had F. D. R.'s Democratic brand of government. I made it because Franklin Delano Roosevelt energized this nation. I made it because Harry Truman fought for working families like mine. I made it because John Kennedy's rising tide lifted even our tiny boat. I made it because Lyndon Johnson showed America that people who were born poor didn't have to die poor. And I made it because a man with whom I served in the Georgia Senate, a man named Jimmy Carter, brought honesty and decency and integrity to public service.”

Zell Miller (1932–2018) Politician and United States Marine Corps officer

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/14/news/their-own-words-excerpts-addresses-keynote-speakers-democratic-convention.html
Keynote address at the 1992 Democratic National Convention

Children , People , Family , Parent

“My connection with Calcutta stretches back a long way. It goes back at least to 1857, the year of what my maternal great-grandfather would have called the Indian Mutiny. He managed to escape the uprising in eastern Uttar Pradesh in a boat down the Ganges to Calcutta. My maternal grandfather made his living selling jute in the city. He bought the jute in what is now Bangladesh, which is how my mother happened to be born there. But she met and married my father in Calcutta. He was the first of his family to come to India where he became one of the senior partners of Gillanders Arbuthnot, a Calcutta-based firm.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Family , Way , Maternity

“Longingly—I think of my friends,
But neither boat nor carriage comes.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

"Flood" (translation by A. Waley)

Thinking

“We've had too many divisions or stand-offs regarding the pan-blue and pan-green divide, the mainlander-Taiwanese divide and even the southern Taiwan-northern Taiwan divide. In fact, we're all in the same boat.”

Wang Ju-hsuan (1961) Taiwanese politician

Wang Ju-hsuan (2015) cited in " Chu's running mate: 'We're all in same boat' http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201511180030.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 18 November 2015.

“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 33, Rainy-Day Laundry, Car Rental, Bob Dylan

Life , Time , Waiting , Reading

“The most important characteristic of documentary classification is that it is concerned with subjects, not just entities of taxonomic classification. What is the nature of the specific subjects - the themes on which books, parts of books, articles or parts of articles are written? A study of book titles alone would suggest that literary subjects have simple names like 'War, Religion', 'Boats', 'Musica; pitch', 'Colour', 'Acridines', 'Wild flowers', and so on. But the study of articles on the documentation level reveals that such titles are simple in appearance only. Such a literary subject is in reality a complex aggregate of specific subjects, eahc which is the main theme discussed from one particular aspect.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 8; Partly cited in Nigerian Library and Information Science Review (1987). Vol 5-8. p. 44.

War , Books , Religion , Flowers

“When four rowers are in a boat, with their backs to the bow, their simple office is to pull the oars. The steersman's office is to look ahead and work the helm. The moment that the rower turns steersman, and tries to look over his shoulder or outpull his fellow oarsman, the boat loses headway. So you and I are placed with our backs to the future. In our hands are the oars of Christian endeavor. Let God steer the boat, and let us attend to the oars.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 125.

God , Future

“Longer boats are coming to win us
Hold on to the shore, or —
They’ll be taking the key from the door”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Longer Boats
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

“Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration… This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (August 2, 1939, delivered October 11, 1939); reported in Einstein on Peace, ed. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (1960, reprinted 1981), pp. 294–95
1930s

Communication , Future , Parting

“Inexplicably no boats are allowed out, but nothing is said in the proclamation about rafts. Everyone improvises and adapts.”

Norman Lewis book Naples '44

Naples '44