Quotes about lake (300 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“To be great, be whole; don't exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you,
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada
Teu exagera ou exclui.
Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és
No mínimo que fazes.
Assim em cada lago a lua toda
Brilha, porque alta vive.
Ricardo Reis (heteronym), Ode (14 February 1933), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Life , Parting

“There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

“Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me.

Way , Communication

“Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red.”

Erin Hunter

Source: Sunset

Peace

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life , Pain , World , Penalty

“Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake”

Sting (1951) English musician

"Synchronicity II"
Synchronicity (1983)
Context: Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

“There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

“YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf,
I am the smaller one on its upper side,'
said the dewdrop to the lake.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Tear , Waiting

“Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening
And the trees come into bud,
For my love's footsteps passing by
Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night
Shine more brightly over her,
The god's moon and the goddess's
Guard her with their light.

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake”

Guy Gavriel Kay (1954) Canadian author of fantasy fiction

Source: A Song for Arbonne

Love , God , Star , Spring

“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Source: Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times

Truth , Religion , Water

“I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Feeling , Sea , Dead

“If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Soul , Understanding

“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.”

Mark Twain book Roughing It

On the Book of Mormon, Roughing It (published 1872), pp. 58-59
Roughing It (1872)

Men , Books , Way , Reading

“I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to C. P. Sanger, 23 December, 1929
1920s

Religion , Tea

“The brimming waves delight the eye on sunny days;
The dimming hills give a rare view in rainy haze.
The West Lake looks like the fair lady at her best
Whether she is richly adorned or plainly dressed.”

Su Shi (1037–1101) Chinese writer

"The West Lake, the Beauty" (《饮湖上初晴后雨》) (1073), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 200

“In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect wood-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable.”

Ernest Hemingway book True at First Light

Source: True at First Light (1999), Ch. 10

Love , Lie , Beauty , Light

“To stagnate in the sun, goldenly, like an obscure lake surrounded by flowers.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

On a strictly intellectual life.
A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 70
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Estagnar ao sol, douradamente, como um lago obscuro rodeado de flores.

Flowers , Sun

“One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life , Way , Mountain , Motivation

“What an extraordinary achievement. What a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. What a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)

People , World , Hope , Change

“My wife told me the car wasn't running well. There was water in the carburetor. I asked where the car was, and she told me it was in the lake.”

Henny Youngman (1906–1998) American comedian

"The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America" (2001)

Cars , Water

“The peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

“I had seen Jesus Christ on the margin of the lake. He came like an ordinary man along the path.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: I had seen Jesus Christ on the margin of the lake. He came like an ordinary man along the path. There is no halo round his head. He is only disclosed by his pallor and his gentleness. Planes of light draw near and mass themselves and fade away around him. He shines in the sky, as he shone on the water. As they have told of him, his beard and hair are the color of wine. He looks upon the immense stain made by Christians on the world, a stain confused and dark, whose edge alone, down on His bare feet, has human shape and crimson color. In the middle of it are anthems and burnt sacrifices, files of hooded cloaks, and of torturers, armed with battle-axes, halberds and bayonets; and among long clouds and thickets of armies, the opposing clash of two crosses which have not quite the same shape. Close to him, too, on a canvas wall, again I see the cross that bleeds. There are populations, too, tearing themselves in twain that they may tear themselves the better; there is the ceremonious alliance, "turning the needy out of the way," of those who wear three crowns and those who wear one; and, whispering in the ear of Kings, there are gray-haired Eminences, and cunning monks, whose hue is of darkness.
I saw the man of light and simplicity bow his head; and I feel his wonderful voice saying:
"I did not deserve the evil they have done unto me."
Robbed reformer, he is a witness of his name's ferocious glory. The greed-impassioned money-changers have long since chased Him from the temple in their turn, and put the priests in his place. He is crucified on every crucifix.

Christ

“When I sell liquor, they call it bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, they call it hospitality.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

“Never leap into a lake without knowing what’s beneath the surface.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1973

“Nine hundred feet below my cave rhododendrons blossomed. I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes... Solitude, solitude! ...Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Magic And Mystery In Tibet

Sense , Mountain , Solitude , Life

“I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.”

Brigit of Kildare (451–525) Irish abbess and saint

Prayer traditionally attributed to St. Brigit, as quoted in Prayers of the Saints: An Inspired Collection of Holy Wisdom (1996), by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, p. 77

Family , Peace , Angels , Drink

“You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my 'Hollywood in Miniature,' my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up.”

Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat

Source: Weetzie Bat

Fish , Light , Heart

“I cannot stand people who disagree with me on the issue of Roe v. Wade… which I believe is about the proper way to cross a lake.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

People , Way

“Magnus, we’re going down to the lake," he said. "Do you want to come?"
“Why?” Magnus inquired.
Alec shrugged, “Clary says it’s pretty,” he said. “I mean, I’ve seen it before, but there was a huge angel rising out of it, and that was distracting.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Angels

“We lost the crickets," she said. "Even you can't make that sound tough."

…"I am Butler," he said with a straight-face. "Everything I say sounds tough. Now, get out of the lake, fairy.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound largemouth bass in my lake.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Revealing his "best moment since he took office in 2001" to a German newspaper reporter, Bild am Sonntag. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4982338.stm (May 7, 2006)
2000s, 2006

“What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Lie , Learning , Dead

“I had woven a tapestry of obscenity that as far as I know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”

Jean Shepherd (1921–1999) American writer and radio host

Source: A Christmas Story

“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Beauty , Nature

“Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Decision

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 1.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804)
Source: I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud

Tree , Dance

“All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

Light

“If he comes in the dark, then it's KYAG Time!"

- Harkat Mulds (The Lake of Souls)”

Darren Shan book The Lake of Souls

Source: The Lake of Souls

Soul , Time

“Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain andA wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.
Perhaps there are times of inherent excellence</p

Truth , Dependency

“I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide.
I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

Cars , Thinking , Suicide

“Um, sorry. I cant read the last line."
"Fish. Have you stolen any fish from the holy lakes?"
"I lived in Kansas.. So.. no”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Fish , Reading

“What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love , Beauty , Personality

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

Source: A Fatal Grace

“Clary’s eyes widened. She wondered if she was about to be broken up with. If so, she would have a thing or two to say to Jace about his timing, after she drowned him in the lake.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Time

“No lake so still but it has its wave.
No circle so perfect but that it has its blur.
I would change things for you if I could; As I can't you must take them as they are.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Change , Perfection

“One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made. That this is still the morning of creation. That mountains, long conceived, are now being born, brought to light by the glaciers, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"Alaska Glaciers: Graphic Description of the Yosemite of the Far Northwest", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 5 of 11 part series "Notes of a Naturalist") dated 7 September 1879, published 27 September 1879; reprinted as "Baird Glacier" in Letters from Alaska, edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pages 28-32 (at page 31); modified slightly and reprinted in Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 5, A Cruise in the Cassiar
First lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
1910s

World , Mountain , Light , Learning

“and when he moved it was like watching oil spread across a lake, smooth and fluid, almost vicious”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

See also the Wikipedia article on the Lake Wobegon effect.
A Prairie Home Companion, News from Lake Wobegon

Women , Men , Children , Strong

“IT was the time of day when Lake Eden residents decided it was too late for a breakfast cookie and too early for a lunch cookie.”

Joanne Fluke book Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

Source: Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

Time

“Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Ayame: "Yuki, let's deepen the bond between us brothers!"
Yuki: "Before you can do that I'll drown you in the deepest part of that lake."
Ayame: "As long as we spend time together."
Yuki: "On second thought, go drown yourself.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Time , Parting

“I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Love , World

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

People , Thinking , Reality

“The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Beauty , Time

“All I heard was the blood rushing through my ears, and the distant rumble and crackle of the Lake of Fire. (And Khufu scratching himself and grunting, but that was nothing new.)”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Distant

“Mr. Darcy was in Pride and Prejudice and at first he was all snooty and huffy; then he fell in a lake and came out with his shirt all wet. And then we all loved him. In a swoony way.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: A Midsummer Tights Dream

Love , Way

“When the Dead do walk, seek water’s run,
For this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river’s best or broadest lake
To ward the Dead and haven make.
If water fails thee, fire’s thy friend;
If neither guards, it will be thy end.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 359-360.

Water , Dead

“Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Dreams , Clothes

“I heard your song the moment we were born. And years later, it dragged me back from the lake of the half-dead when all I wanted to do was die. Each time someone tried to kill me, it sang its tune and gave me hope.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Hope , Time , Dead

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.
She gave a short negative motion with her head. And then words, so sweet, like a cool northern breeze blowing off the lake. “You could hold me now.”
It was almost his undoing.
“Ah baby.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: The Darkest Hour

Baby

“… this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath…”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Life , Beauty , Time , Perfection

“A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Feeling

“I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Thinking , Reality , Light

“The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms”

Bruno Latour (1947) French sociologist, philosopher and anthropologist

Source: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

World

“Yeah! Bring it on lake!" -Coach Gleeson Hedge”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“Western field-work conjures up images of struggle on horseback […]—toughing it out on one canteen a day as you labor up and down mountains. The value of a site is supposedly correlated with the difficulty of getting there. This, of course, is romantic drivel. Ease of access is no measure of importance. The famous La Brea tar pits are right in downtown Los Angeles. To reach the Clarkia lake beds, you turn off the main road at Buzzard's Roost Trophy Company and drive the remaining fifty yards right up to the site.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Magnolias from Moscow", p. 403
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Angels , Mountain

“To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.”

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 81–92

Love , Beauty , Summer , Perfection

“Seeing the water birds on the lake increase in number day by day, I thought to myself how nice it would be if it snowed before we got back to the Palace—the garden would look so beautiful; and then, two days later, while I was away on a short visit, lo and behold, it did snow. As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, taking note of the flowers, the birds in song, the way the skies change from season to season, the moon, the frost and snow, doing little more than registering the passage of time. How would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to the very full.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring (Penguin Books, 1996)
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Life , Beauty , Way , Home

“It this terrible simplification that there is one Africa, and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that, it is not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. And so it is in Africa, it's a lot of difference.What do we think it would be concurrency? And what is concurrency? In Sweden, we have no concurrency. We have serial monogamy. Vodka New Year's Eve, new partner for the spring, vodka Midsummer Eve, new partner for the fall, vodka, and it goes on like this, you know, and you collect a big number of ex's, and we've got a terrible chlamydia epidemic.”

Hans Rosling (1948–2017) Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker

On the HIV epidemic http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv.html

Way , Spring , Thinking , Time

“Well I love her;
But I love to fish.
I spend all day out on this lake
And hell is all I catch.
Today she met me at the door
Said I would have to choose.
If I hit that fishin' hole today,
She'd be packin' all her things,
And she'd be gone by noon.Well, I'm gonna miss her
When I get home.
But right now I'm on this lake shore
And I'm sittin' in the sun.
I'm sure it'll hit me
When I walk through that door tonight
That I'm gonna miss her.
Oh, lookie there, I've got a bite.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song), written by Brad Paisley and Frank Rogers
Song lyrics, Part II (2001)

Love , Home , Hell , Fish

“Our new camp is on a windswept rock point. … We don't know what lake we're on, and don't care …”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Canada, 1925"; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 67.
1920s

“My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

St. 2
1920s, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Thinking , Horse

“We cannot continue to mourn about our country being poor while our minerals are lying untapped and with harvesting at Lake Natron, we will not be the first to do so, because our neighbours, Kenya, are doing the same on the other side of the lake.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

2011-04-01 http://dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=18633
2011

Lying , Country

“Near the lake where drooped the willow,
Long time ago!”

George Pope Morris (1802–1864) American publisher

Near the Lake, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Time

“One little leak becomes a lake,
Says the tiny voice in my earpiece”

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

"And It Rained All Night"
Lyrics, The Eraser (2006)

“Doris Lessing: We simply have no idea of Chicago … We never think of you as being on a lake, or of the city being beautiful. We think about the gangsters. You do still have gangsters, don't you?
Terkel: Yes, but these days they're mostly in business, or politics.”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

Conversation with Lessing in 1969, quoted in "Doris Lessing comes to town" (15 October 1969) by Roger Ebert http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19691015/PEOPLE/71016002/1023

Beauty , Idea , Business , Thinking

“For nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.”

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

Woonotes II, st. 7
1840s, Poems (1847)

Beauty , Nature , Perfection , Sea

“It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.”

James A. Michener book The Covenant

The Covenant (1980) First lines

Beauty , Time

“We find in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal consisting of vegetable matter formerly drifted into seas and lakes. …These seas and The commercial prosperity and numerical strength of a nation may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.1, p. 2
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Dependency , Sea

“My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung!
Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid.
Narrow is thy dwelling now! dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before. Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass, which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

War , Lie , Peace , Art

“On Saturday, the 24th January, 1680/2nd Muharram, the Emperor went to view lake Udaisagar, constructed by the Rana, and ordered all the three temples on its banks to be demolished.'…On the 29th January [1680]/7th Muharram, Hasan 'Ali Khan brought to the Emperor twenty camel-loads of tents and other things captured from the Rana's palace and reported that one hundred and seventy-two other temples in the environs of Udaipur had been destroyed. The Khan received the title of Bahadur 'Alamgirshahi'…'Abu Turab, who had been sent to demolish the temples of Amber, returned to Court on Tuesday, the 10th August [1680]/24th Rajab, and reported that he had pulled down sixty-six temples.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. (Different translation : Abu Tarab, who had been commissioned to effect the destruction of the idol temples in Amber, reported in person on the 24th Rajab, that threescore and six of these edifices had been levelled with the ground.)
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1680s

“I had this very interesting experience when I was about 13. I went to Finland and it was dead in the middle of winter. It was freezing cold. There was so much snow and I went to Ainola, which is Sibelius' house. It was completely isolated -- just snow and forest, trees and the lake, completely beautiful but very quiet. And very serene. And I thought, well, this is where he was composing his stuff. And his great symphonies and the violin concerto, this is where it basically came from. I also got this little handbook about Ainola and there's a part that says that Sibelius wouldn't allow running water in his house because it disturbed him and his thought processes. So his daughters had to go out to the well which was half a mile away and then bring back water. So I thought, "Wow!" This person was really that much into control and silence. So you go and look at the concerto after that and the way it starts in the beginning: very shimmery. Very beautiful. But in a way it is isolated, and you feel kind of lonely when you're playing that. And gradually of course it builds up into this great big climax when every single orchestra-like instrument known to mankind is clashing and you're trying to break out there and you're trying to play your heart out. But really it did help me realize what he is like.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

PBS.org 1998 http://www.pbs.org/lflc/backstage/march3/chang.htm

Beauty , Way , Feeling , Tree

“Lake Wobegon, where smart doesn't count for so much. A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.”

Garrison Keillor book Lake Wobegon Days

Lake Wobegon Days (1985), p. 355

Home , Time , Reading

“In the depths of our crater lake, everything is silent. The volcano's been extinct for ages. Layer upon layer of solitude, like folds of soft mud. The little bit of light that manages to penetrate to the depths lights up the surroundings like the remains of some faint, distant memory. At these depths there's no sign of life. I don't know how long she looks at me -not at me, maybe, but at the spot where I am. Time's rules don't apply here. Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 23, Kafka Temura

Life , Age , Solitude , Light

“When the early morning sun
first pierced the grayness in the sky,
a pickerel rose from his watery home
to climb a pine tree, singing.
And high in the branches, he looked upon
the morning's glowing beauty -
the wind-blown ripples on the lake,
dew-freshened flowers and fields below.”

Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1952) Finnish writer, poet, geographer and teacher

Aaro Hellaakoski. "The song of the pike hauen laulu." Aina Swan Cutler (trans.) in: Aili Jarvenpa, ‎Michael G. Karni (1989), Sampo, the magic mill: a collection of Finnish-American writing.

Beauty , Home , Flowers , Tree

“The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator. (Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured into Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?")”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Pain , Pleasure , Beauty , Soul

“Full of great changes
My three and fifty years have been.
I commented on the holy writ - a heavy sin
That echoes to the skies.
Now I will sail on the lake of lotus blooms
And break into the skies within the water.”

Tetsugen Doko (1630–1682) Japanese Zen Master

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6)

Water , Change

“Already handbills were in circulation; some presenting, in large print, the alternative of justice on the conspirators or ruin to the Republic; others in equally large print urging the observance of the law and the granting of the Appeal. Round these jutting islets of black capitals there were lakes of smaller characters setting forth arguments less necessary to be read: for it was an opinion entertained at that time (in the first flush of triumph at the discovery of printing), that there was no argument more widely convincing than question-begging phrases in large type.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume III, Chapter XIII
Romola (1863)

Justice , Law , Question , Time

“It is difficult to know whether an independent Macedonian state would have come into existence had Tito not recognised and supported the development of Macedonian ethnicity as oart of his ethnically organised Yugoslavia. He did this as a counter to Bulgaria, which for centuries had a historical claim on the area as far west as Lake Ohrid and the present border of Albania.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

The Eye Expanded By Frances B. Titchener, Richard F. Moorton

Support

“I wrote the Light of What We Know here..(at Yaddo), over several long stays. I'm not sure where I would have written it otherwise. I've been homeless since 2007, all my few possessions put into storage before I set off to travel across Europe and Asia. My journey was interrupted because of the deaths of loved ones and it was within the interruption that I began and finished writing the novel. Yaddo, I was told, might be a good place to write. … Yaddo turned out to suit me perfectly. A stately home—not English privilege but a Scooby Doo mansion—with woodlands, three lakes and magical charm, this charitable foundation has for a hundred years been host to giants such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote. I'm still homeless and have yet to resume my broken travels, but wherever I go, I know that Yaddo and its 400-acre stretch of God's own country was always a kind of home to me and helped to nurture In the Light of What We Know.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel", April 4, 2015 Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/themes/67591492/Sweet-inspiration-Writing-and-travel April 4, 2015. Retrieved on 2015-04-05.

Love , Death , God , Travel

“Awake, ye West Winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy freshness breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake,
And Evening comes with locks bodropp'd with dew;
On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake
The trembling rye-grass and the harehell blue,
And ever and anon fair Mulla's plaints renew.”

William Julius Mickle Sir Martyn

Sir Martyn (1777), Canto I, stanza 1

Grass

“One of his charges is that I am accusing the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon of "dual loyalties." That is true, but not in the way Lake imagines. I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U. S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party.”

Juan Cole (1952) American scholar

Neoconservatives

Way , Imagination , Thinking , Loyalty

“I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. xvii

World , Dreams , Way , Search

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Shooting of Dan McGrew http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/dan_mcgrew.html (1907), The Cremation of Sam McGee http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage=26

Men , Secret , Light , Sun

“Blush'd the first blush of coming day,
Faded the fairy band away.
They pass'd and only left behind
A lingering fragrance on the wind,
And on the lake, their haunted home,
One long white wreath of silver foam.”

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

The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
The Golden Violet (1827)

Home

“There are those who are willing to be herded in droves through 'scenic' places; who find mountains grand if they be proper mountains, with waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. To such the Kansas plains are tedious. They see the endless corn, but not the heave and grunt of ox teams breaking the prairie. History, for them, grows on campuses. They look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of the buffalo.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

" Country http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&entity=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile.p0666&id=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile&isize=XL" [1941]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 32-33.
1940s

History , Mountain

“The Lake was that deep blue, which night
Wears in the zenith moon's full light;
With pebbles shining thro', like gems
Lighting sultana's diadems :”

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

(2nd October 1824) The Lake
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Light , Night