Quotes about sink
page 2

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

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

May 24, 2005 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html 2000s, 2005

Truth

“Shells sink, dreams float. Life's good on our boat.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Life, Dreams

“Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed… I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Smile

“And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“If killing yourself is not an option anymore,
you have to sink into the darkness instead,
and make something out of it.”

Emma Forrest (1976) British journalist, novelist and screenwriter

Source: Your Voice in My Head

“The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
There's leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who ore the ones that we kept in
charge
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's Away, God's away
God's away on Business”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

God, Business

“I can’t for the life of me not eat something that I want to eat. You know how if you turned on a faucet in your sink to wash your hands, the idea of leaving the bathroom without turning it off is insane? That’s how I am about ignoring delicious food.”

Mindy Kaling book Why Not Me?

Source: Why Not Me?

Life, Food, Idea

“Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.”

Farley Mowat (1921–2014) Canadian author and environmentalist

“Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Nature

“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.

“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.

“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

Time

“Stripping the protection wards off the ship was bad enough—it's a strong, strong enchantment, demon-based—but when you fell, I had to put a fast spell on the truck so it wouldn't sink when I lost consciousness. And I will lose consciousness, Alec.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Strong

“Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.”

Nick Flynn book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Alcohol, Past

“Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Miserables

“It's first owner… well, things didn't turn out too well for her. Her name was Helena.'
Piper let that sink in. "Wait, you mean the Helena? Helena of Troy?'
Annabeth nodded.
"And it's just sitting in your toolshed?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Waiting

“If you give me wings
I will soar for you

Even if this whole land
Sinks down to the water

If you give me a sword
I will fight for you

Even if this whole sky
Shoots through with your light”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Light, Water, Fight

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Love, Feeling, Passion

“They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" And Death Shall Have No Dominion http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=277", st. 1 (1943) Source: Collected Poems

Love, Death, Star, Lovers

“Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Loss

“Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Grass

“We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Books, Reading

“I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

World, Feeling, Reading, Night

“I want a relationship i can finally sink my teeth into”

Ellen Schreiber book Vampire Kisses

Variant: I want a relationship I can finally sink my teeth into.
Source: Vampire Kisses

“Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

God

“Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Standup Comic (1999)

Home

“Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it.
Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens,
that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook
your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Women, Cry, Clothes, Cute

“There was a man who was worthless, and knew he was worthless, and yet however far down he tried to sink his soul, there was always some part of him capable of great action.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Soul, Parting

“I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson's sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain that Jackson's hospitality.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

“He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

“Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure
The bastion of sensation. Do not waver
Into language. Do not waver in it.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

“My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.”

Barbara Pym book Excellent Women

Source: Excellent Women

Life

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life, Parent

“For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Love, Life, Girl, Help

“Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Life, Sea

“She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.”

Jack Kerouac book Maggie Cassidy

Source: Maggie Cassidy

Soul

“Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Time

“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Beauty

“He taught me there's a place on a man's back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once,' Sebastian had said. 'I guess we got the same birthday present that year, big brother,' Jace thought. 'Didn't we?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Birthday, Heart

“Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

“Before you swim, you gotta be okay to sink.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

“Press on! If Fortune play thee false
To-day, tomorrow she'll be true;
Whom now she sinks she now exalts,
Taking old gifts and granting new,
The wisdom of the present hour
Makes up the follies past and gone;
To weakness, strength succeeds, and power
From frailty springs! Press on, press on!”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Wisdom, Spring, Past, Falseness

“Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 4. The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

Spring, Fight, Flying

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Death, Pain, Hope

“The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 8.

Life, Autumn

“But may the Earth first swallow me alive,
Or Jove's dire Thunder sink me down to Hell,
Where Shades, pale Shades, of Night eternal dwell,
E're I with Shame, and those dear Ties dispense:
He who my first Love had, hath born it hence,
And in his Grave for ever let it rest.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Love, Hell, Night

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Wisdom, Men, Hostility

“I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Evil, Time, Heart

“Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails,
And honor sinks where commerce long prevails.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 91.

Freedom, Wealth

“.. I need to immerse my gaze in your eyes, it is in their mirror that I see myself as I would like to be, and it is only in seeing myself as I feel I should be. I think, therefore I am, my Beautiful One, to both of us, every day we recreate the world, every day a paradise falls in our hands, to darken in the dust of many paradises... The paradises will fall in our hands, will sink in the dust and will be born again according to our will.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

World, Beauty, Feeling, Thinking

“I was floating in a peaceful sea, rescued by a sinking ship.”

Aaron Weiss

January 1979.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Peace, Sea

“Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Love, Sadness, Heart, Forgetting

“[A]ny seagoing vessel—commercial or military, from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea to the Caribbean—could be monitored by the United States Navy, who could choose to watch it, stop it, or sink it.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 44

Sea

“O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, " as the pebble in the willow brook " until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts— a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

Love, Fear, Feeling, Soul

“The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 180

Men, Color, Kiss, Tree

“There are a disproportionate amount of assaults against children by homosexuals than by heterosexuals, you can't deny that. And the reason is very clear: homosexuality is perverse. It represents a degradation of a person's mind and if a person will sink that low and there are no restraints from God's law, then there is no telling to whatever sins he will commit as well.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

God, Children, Law, Personality

“I know a lovely little flower, a flower for which I pine —
I would go gather it, but bars my heavy hours confine;
Oh, grief, when free, how easily that little flower was mine!
...
Oh, were I sinking to the grave I often ask in vain,
And welcome Death stood by to loose the wasted captive's chain —
Ah, name me the Forget-me-not, I'd wake to life again!”

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

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Lovely Little Flower' — Goethe.
Translations, From the German

Love, Life, Death, Flowers

“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 poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Money, Thinking

“If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

30 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Men, Angels, Dependency

“Carolina or Virginia may try to break away. In the effort it may destroy its local government as it has now destroyed it, except by successful revolution no rebellious state can escape the jurisdiction, and it will be reorganized exclusively by the national authority of the United States of America. This is what Gettysburg roars and Vicksburg and Port Royal. This is the thunder of the Kearsarge as she sinks the Alabama, This is the song of Sherman's march to the sea; and Lee's surrender, the fall of Richmond, and the universal crash of the rebellion mutter and murmur their reluctant 'Amen, Amen'. But, at the same moment that the profound sense of nationality and the power of the nation are revealed, the national mind has gained a clear perception of the relation of morals and politics, the strict dependence of civil order and national prosperity upon morality.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Sense, Effort, Universe, Success

“I follow you — because I must. Do you think I am not afraid of death? I am afraid because I do not know what there is, and see only darkness without end; which makes me recoil. I do not know whether there be nothingness, or existence without space and time; perhaps some midplanetary wind carries the spiritual monad from star to star to implant it in an ever-renewing existence. I do not know whether there be immense restlessness, or a peace so perfect as only Omnipotence and Love can bestow on us. But since you have died through my "I do not know," how could I remain here — and live?
The more I fear, the more I do not know, — the more I cannot let you go alone; I cannot, Aniela mine, — and I follow. Together we shall sink into nothingness, or together begin a new life; and here below where we have suffered let us be buried in oblivion.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

Rome, 5 December
Without Dogma (1891)

Love, Life, Death, Fear

“Every man feels himself wounded, where he finds himself neglected, and that in proportion as he is conscious of endeavouring to merit attention. I shall be satisfied with any measure that the Congress shall take, that has not a direct tendency to degrade me in the public estimation. A measure of that sort would sink me in my own esteem, and render me spiritless and uneasy in my situation, and consequently unfit for the service.”

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

Letter to George Washington (May 1776)

Feeling

“In this country … men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.”

Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886) American historical editor, politician and diplomat (1807-1886)

Diary entry (15 April 1836), as quoted in The Travellers' Dictionary of Quotation : Who Said What, About Where? (1983) by Peter Yapp, p. 862.

Men, Country

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis forever beneath the sea.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Zend explaining the Spawn of Dagon to Elak
Short fiction, The Spawn Of Dagon (1938)
Context: "They dare'd not invade the palace while the globe shone, for the light-rays would have killed them. … This island-continent would have gone down beneath the sea long ago if I hadn't pitted my magic and my science against that of the children of Dagon. They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis forever beneath the sea. But within that room" — Zend nodded toward the curtain that hid the sea-bred horrors — "in that room there is power far stronger than theirs. I have drawn strength from the stars, and the cosmic sources beyond the universe. You know nothing of my power. It is enough — more than enough — to keep Atlantis steady on its foundation, impregnable against the attacks of Dagon's breed. They have destroyed other lands before Atlantis."

Sea

“Another great writer who led me on It this stage was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. I had read all his novels but had never been able to understand why he had been honoured as a rishi. I myself was a novelist and had already written several humane stories. I thought that a novelist dealt with the dimensions of human character and mapped the heights it could scale and the depths to which it could sink. Why should we foist the title of a rishi on this poor fellow? That way rishis will be available a dime a dozen. My doubts about Bankim Chandra being a rishi were removed when I read the second volume of his Collected Works in Bengali. His insights into the innermost core of Hindu culture were a revelation. His Ramayaner Alochona made me see the monstrosities of modern Indology, more than ever before. I immediately translated this masterpiece into Hindi.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Way, Understanding, Reading

“You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
And say, that my castles are built but on sand;
Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand.”

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

Castle Building
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Smile, Water, Appearance

“It was the waste of a trip. She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead." I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Buttercup (p. 386)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Pain, Stupidity, Cats, Tear

“Regarding the controversial article “Society consists of people”, it is a fact that negroes or negroid, Sub-Saharan persons live in something resembling a western society only in places where order is kept by a white system of violent dominance (police, army and the justice system). It is likewise a fact that the so-called western structures start to crumble and sinking towards the typical African state of being starts immediately as blacks reach a majority or dominant position. Examples of this include post-independence Haiti and post-apartheid South Africa.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2007), published in the blog Scripta Lisäyksiä edelliseen http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/lisayksia_edelliseen.html, May 9, 2007 2005-09

People, Justice, Personality

“I am a Southern man and a slaveholder. A kind and merciful one, I trust, and none the worse for being a slaveholder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality, one inch of what belongs to us as members of this republic! What! Acknowledged inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority!”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20070123074414/http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.667/pub_detail.asp (19 February 1847) 1840s

Life

“Supposed former infatuation junkie,
I sink three pointers and you wax poetically.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

So Pure
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998)

“The doctrine of the cynics is the Ideal reversed, the parody of physical and moral beauty, the crime of mind, the degradation of imagination. I could not take pleasure in it. There was too much enthusiasm within me to permit me to crawl through those sinks of the brain. My nature had wings. The dangers to which I was exposed were above, not below.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book VI, Note V, p. 86
Les confidences (1849)

Pleasure, Beauty, Imagination, Nature

“Even after my old man returned from the wars with all his ribbons and a thousand stories I still struggled for survival without my love. He was so busy rigging up the house to look like a ship, printing the rules of command on little notes which he pinned to the wall above the sink, Attention: Do not waste water … Do not throw garbage in here; in the outhouse and in the washroom, Attention: Toilet paper rules … Use only four sections per use … Do not throw funny paper in commode. I doubt if he noticed my dying condition.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 92.

Love, War, Business, Water

“This character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 180.

Death

“Canada is sinking deeper and deeper into illiberalism--in the name of liberal values”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/957353757259509761 (27 January 2018) 2018

“Everything takes place in an infinitely greater field than what is framed by the size of the picture or by what is materially in the picture. This matter [door/window/wall] is but a support inviting the viewer to participate in the much larger game of a thousand and one visions and feelings; it is the talisman lifting or sinking walls into the deepest recesses of our spirit, opening and at times closing windows in the construction of our impotence, our bondage, or our freedom. The 'subject-matter' then may be found in the picture or it may exist solely inside the spectator's head.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Feeling, Game, Support, Freedom

“The foundations of the universal value of art are given to us now by psychology. This is the common base that enables us to sink its roots to the origins before man and to discover the primary myths of humanity. The artist must confront these myths and reduce them, by means of amorphous and confused materials, to clear images. Since these are atavistic forces that have their origins in the subconscious, the work of art takes on a magical significance.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 16-17

Art, Universe

“On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

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

Smile, Parent, Sleep

“Carmelita hold me tighter,
I think I'm sinking down.
And I'm all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Carmelita"
Warren Zevon (1976)

Thinking

“The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Ch. 2, p. 66

Past, Future

“The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension are at an end.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death, Men, Age, Disease

“The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let’s not try to be witty, but record the worst of human viciousness we’ve seen without changing one word. When that’s done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That’s work enough for a lifetime.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 3

Life, People, Way, Change

“Our research has shown that your body often has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself—and much more quickly than people once realized—when we address the underlying causes of illness. For many people, the choices we make each day in what we eat and in how we live are among the most important underlying causes. When most people are prescribed medications to lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, they are usually told, “You will have to take this for the rest of your life," often in ever-increasing dosages. Why? Because the underlying causes are not being addressed. When I lecture, I often show a slide of doctors busily mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink without also turning off the faucet.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

The Spectrum (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), p. 16 https://books.google.it/books?id=YgooDmnD6l0C&pg=PA16.

Life, People

“You may be quite sure that if little light comes from a Christian character, little light comes into it. We must have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us. But let the love of Jesus become the master-principle of our hearts, and there will be no halting or irresolution; no parleying with temptation; no seeking to explain away our duty under color of deliberating to discover what it is; no looking one way and walking another; but with undivided souls, and with enthusiastic devotion, we shall do only and always the will of Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 116.

Love, Color, Way, Soul

“Come back again, old heart! Ah me!
Methinks in those thy coward fears
There might, perchance, a courage be,
That fails in these the manlier years;
Courage to let the courage sink,
Itself a coward base to think,
Rather than not for heavenly light
Wait on to show the truly right.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

The Higher Courage http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/highercourage.html, st. 7 (1840).

Fear, Courage, Thinking, Light

“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)

“What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Nature, Sense

“I may make you feel but I can't make you think
Your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink.”

Ian Anderson (1947) Scottish musician, leader of Jethro Tull

"Thick As a Brick".
Thick as a Brick (1972)

Love, Feeling

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

War, Youth, Age, World

“Last year I lose almost 20 pounds. When I go home end season I weigh only 163. I worry more 'bout bad back than I worry 'bout baseball. Now I feel goot. Ver goot. I sink I play one fitty games and I hit thee hunnert. I feel I hab goot season. Maybe fiteen home runs, nyenee RBIs, steal maybe dirty bases.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Great Outdoors: Drafted for $4,000, Clemente Becomes Bucs' Top Bargain; Now That His Back Ailment Is Cured, Outfielder Hopes He'll Hit .300 Again" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=xUEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Dk4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7140%2C2566447 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Thursday, April 10, 1958), p. 28 Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1958</big>

Feeling, Home, Game, Season

“Like gay-hued leaves after an autumn storm, the fallen littered the plain; the sinking sun shimmered on burnished helmets, gilt-worked mail, silver breastplates, broken swords and the heavy regal folds of silken standards, overthrown in pools of curdling crimson. In silent heaps lay war-horses and their steel-clad riders, flowing manes and blowing plumes stained alike in the red tide. About them and among them, like the drift of a storm, were strewn slashed and trampled bodies in steel caps and leather jerkins…”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Scarlet Citadel" (1933)

War, Autumn, Sun, Horse

“Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the "clear heart" of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

On the poetry of Myōe and ideas of Saigyō Hōshi
Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Nature, Light, Heart

“There's not a hair
Sticks on my head but, like a leaden plummet,
It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither;
The journey is not long.”

John Ford (dramatist) The Broken Heart

Act IV, sc. ii.
The Broken Heart (c. 1625-33)

“Get things under control first, then get focused. If your ship is sinking, you don't care where it's pointed.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

25 January 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/8192067730 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“I also respond very strongly to characters I have not done before… something I can really sink my teeth into, and what's scary, and what terrifies me, because that's where I need to go.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Toady "Nothing 'Bleak' about PBS for Gillian Anderson" http://www.today.com/id/10912748/ns/today-today_entertainment/t/nothing-bleak-about-pbs-gillian-anderson/#.VpKEALZ96Uk (January 18, 2006) 2000s