Quotes about sink (503 quotes, page 4) | Quotes of famous people

“Later in the evening when the sun is sinking low
All day I been waiting for the whistle to blow
Sitting in a teepee built right on the tracks
Rolling them bones until the foreman comes back
Pick up you belongings boys and scatter about
We've got an off-schedule train comin' two miles out”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Let It Rock" (1960)
Song lyrics

Boy , Waiting , Sun , Training

“Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La faute des hommes supérieurs est de dépenser leurs jeunes années à se rendre dignes de la faveur. Pendant qu'ils thésaurisent, leur force est la science pour porter sans effort le poids d'une puissance qui les fuit; les intrigants, riches de mots et dépourvus d'idées, vont et viennent, surprennent les sots, et se logent dans la confiance des demi-niais.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Men , Youth , Confidence , Idea

“England totally disarmed and an easy prey to hostile forces! Can you think of anything more likely to excite cupidity and hostile intention? We should sink to the level of a fifth rate Power, our Colonies would be stripped from us, our commerce would decline, famine and unemployment would stalk the land. … I share your longing for peace. God forbid that it should be again disturbed! The constant and undivided effort of the Government is for its preservation. But I have yet to learn that the cause of peace can be served by rendering our country impotent.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Arthur Ponsonby (16 December 1927); published in Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945 (2000) by Martin Ceadel, p. 271
1927

God , Hostility , Peace , Thinking

“Eons and unimaginable eons ago, before mankind existed on earth, only the waters existed. There was no land. And from the slime there sprang up a race of beings which dwelt in the sunken abysses of the ocean, inhuman creatures that worshipped Dagon, their god. When eventually the waters receded and great continents arose, these beings were driven down to the lowest depths. Their mighty kingdom, that had once stretched from pole to pole, was shrunken as the huge land masses lifted. Mankind came — but from whence I do not know — and civilizations arose. … These things hate man, for they feel that man has usurped their kingdom. Their greatest hope is to sink the continents again, so that the seas will roll over all the earth, and not a human being will survive. Their power will embrace the whole world, as it once did eons ago. They are not human, you see, and they worship Dagon. They want no other gods worshipped on Earth. Ishtar, dark Eblis, even Poseidon of the sunlit seas....”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Short fiction, The Spawn Of Dagon (1938)

God , Hate , World , Hope

“Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it — from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/t/titanic.html of Titanic (1997).
Four star reviews

Time

“Oh! My dear! My tis of thee! What a tangled web we weave!

Everyone is the one until the one falls down

Then we're all just "please please please"

The painted rust will only fool the fools for just so long

Eventually, that's when they'll see everything was wrong

Oh! The shame! Humility! What a wicked gang are we!

Like a liar looking down on a thief looking down on a killer looking down on a creep

Oh! This sinking ship will only hold its course for just so long

Eventually, that's when they'll see everything is wrong”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"What A Wicked Gang Are We" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/10/

Fools , Painting

“We have no proverbial tea to dump, should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports? Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

War , Hope , Tea

“And now I know it's hard when you don't know what to think

And every single smile is a foil and you're waking up

You might try but you won't get by until you're crucified for all the things you try to do

Well I don't care if you sink or swim

And I don't care how you hold it in

As long as you don't bother me with all the things I don't bother you with

And 9 times out of 10 you might be right

But what about that time you know you're wrong?

You sing that same song

And everybody smiles but they'll never get along”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"We Are The Few" from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/egn/06/

Smile , Thinking , Singing , Time

“Do well and right, and let the world sink.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Country Parson, chapter xxix, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World

“Almost half of the bankruptcies in the United States are connected to an illness in the family, whether people had health insurance or not. Middle-class Americans, who had the misfortune of either experiencing a medical emergency themselves or watching a family member suffer, were then forced to face the daunting task of pulling themselves out of debt. Bankruptcy law has allowed them to start over. It has given hope. Now this new law will put people on their own. Illness or emergency creates medical bills. We are telling the people that they themselves are to blame. At the same time, we are removing protections that would stay an eviction, that would keep a roof over the head of a working family. We allow the credit industry to trick consumers into using subprime cards, with exorbitant interest rate hikes and fees. Then we hand those same consumers over to an unforgiving prison of debt, to be put on a rack of insolvency and squeezed dry by the credit card industry. We are protecting the profits of the credit card industry instead of protecting the economic future of the American people. Americans are left on their own. That's what this Administration's "Ownership Society" is all about — you're on your own — and your ship is sinking.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (14 April, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=240761331899+3+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

People , Health , Family , Law

“Herr Reich Chancellor, present-day science is following a wrong and dangerous path. First and foremost it concerns the treatment of water - the principal agent of life. The existing methods of water control, power stations and forestry are ruining water - the earth's blood. It becomes diseased, and so affects all its surroundings. Instead of progress, the future promises catastrophe. With your four-year plan, and the technological methods employed, you are demolishing Germany, instead of building her up. In this way, Germany will sink within ten years..”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Life , Disease , Way , Water

“The management science approach to organizational decision making is the analog to the rational approach by individual managers. Management science came into being during World War II. At that time, mathematical and statistical techniques were applied to urgent, large-scale military problems that were beyond the ability of individual decision makers. Mathematicians, physicists, and operations researchers used systems analysis to develop artillery trajectories, antisubmarine strategies, and bombing strategies such as salvoing (discharging multiple shells simultaneously). Consider the problem of a battleship trying to sink an enemy ship several miles away. The calculation for aiming the battleship's guns should consider distance, wind speed, shell size, speed and direction of both ships, pitch and roll of the firing ship, and curvature of the earth. Methods for performing such calculations using trial and error and intuition are not accurate, take far too long, and may never achieve success.
This is where management science came in. Analysts were able to identify the relevant variables involved in aiming a ship's guns and could model them with the use of mathematical equations. Distance, speed, pitch, roll, shell size, and so on could be calculated and entered into the equations. The answer was immediate, and the guns could begin firing. Factors such as pitch and roll were soon measured mechanically and fed directly into the targeting mechanism. Today, the human element is completely removed from the targeting process. Radar picks up the target, and the entire sequence is computed automatically.”

Richard L. Daft (1964) American sociologist

Source: Organization Theory and Design, 2007-2010, p. 500

War , World , Error , Mathematics

“But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1997 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Hope , Sense , Future , Happiness

“In vain she strives with dying hands
To wrench away the blade:
Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,
Closed by the wound it made.
Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath;
Her heavy eyes sink down in death;
Her cheek's bright colors fade.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book XI, p. 427

Death , Color

“When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault of love;
The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
Sink in the soft captivity together.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

Love , Strong , Time

“"Rock" [music]… is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000)

People , Music , Light , Universe

“And now the high crest sinks, now the head is nodding overpowered and the huge neck has slipped from around the fleece it guarded, like refluent Po or Nile that sprawls in seven streams or Alpheus when his waters enter the Hesperian world.”
Iamque altae cecidere iubae nutatque coactum iam caput atque ingens extra sua vellera cervix ceu refluens Padus aut septem proiectus in amnes Nilus et Hesperium veniens Alpheos in orbem.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 88–91

World , Water

“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”

Václav Havel book The Power of the Powerless

Source: Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless

Truth , Star , Understanding , Time

“When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.”

Jean Paul (1763–1825) German novelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 238.

Imagination , Flowers , Thinking , Effort

“My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.”

Elizabeth I of England On Monsieur's Departure

"On Monsieur's Departure" (February 1582).

Love , Passion , Sun , Flying

“Sinking faster than a boat without a hull.”

Richard Ashcroft (1971) English singer-songwriter

Sonnet
Urban Hymns (1997)

“We have aimed at popularity in the best sense of that term. The truly popular writer never sinks into the vulgar crowd. He rather raises the masses by bringing the highest subjects within their comprehension, making them, without a show of erudition, easily understood”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

Sense

“So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink

And I need not remind you, our discount tickets for this sinking ship

Take-backs and sweet regrets, that's all that we have left

No one is looking out for anyone but number one

One to one, two to dance, we all get our sweet romance

Though sour grapes will turn to wine it's all just vinegar with time”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Receiving End of it All" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/09/

Love , Drink , Wine , Time

“I had no desire to copy Pollock. I didn't want to take a stick and dip it in a can of enamel [paint]. I needed something more liquid, watery, thinner. All my life, I have been drawn to water and translucency. I love the water; I love to swim, to watch changing seascapes. One of my favorite childhood games was to fill a sink with water and punt nail polish into to see what happened when the colors burst up the surface, merging into each other as floating, changing shapes.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 80
1990s - 2000s

Love , Life , Color , Game

“My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs. Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it. But I think they underestimate the American people. Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Source: Faith in America speech, 2007

People , World , Faith , Thinking

“There can be no doubt that the modem environment is changing faster than any environment ever previously changed; therefore, the social center of gravity constantly tends to shift more rapidly; and therefore modem civilization has unprecedented need of the administrative or generalizing mind. I take it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered, otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization will dissolve. A moment arrives when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in tum is set aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration sets in, the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks back to a level at which it can cohere.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, p. 204-5, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Change , Perfection

“We can now return to the NCERT guideline which proclaims that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in medieval India shall be regarded as political rather than religious. There is no justification for such a characterisation of the conflict. The Muslims at least were convinced that they were waging a religious war against the Hindu infidels. The conflict can be regarded as political only if the NCERT accepts the very valid proposition that Islam has never been a religion, and that it started and has remained a political ideology of terrorism with unmistakable totalitarian trends and imperialist ambitions. The first premises as well as the procedures of Islam bear a very close resemblance to those of Communism and Nazism. Allah is only the predecessor of the Forces of Production invoked by the Communists, and of the Aryan Race invoked by the Nazis.
My heart sinks at the very idea of such a sinister scheme being sponsored by an educational agency set up by the government of a democratic country. It is an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing. Having been a student of these processes in Communist countries, I have a strong suspicion that this document has also sprung from the same sort of mind. This mind has presided for long over the University Grants Commission and other educational institutions, and has been aided and abetted by the residues of Islamic imperialism masquerading as secularists.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

War , Education , Religion , Communication

“[M]aybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 301
Paper Towns (2008)

World , Imagination , Understanding , Grass

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

God , Hell

“…When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, but when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

Herzl about the way the Jews are perceived by antisemites when they do not have a country of their own
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

“The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink...”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 5 (at page 41)

Time

“We are on a nice downward glide. I call it circling the drain … And the circles get smaller and smaller and faster and faster, if you watch the sink empty… Huish! And we'll be gone. And that's fine. I welcome it. I wish I could live 1000 years to watch it happen. From a distance — so I can see it all.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Archive of American Television http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/george-carlin, from one of Carlin's final interviews (2008)
Interviews, Television Appearances

“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)

Life , Women , War , Children

“Then he rises from the table and goes out into the Garden of Gethsemane; there he sinks down – oh, that it had happened already! He sinks down, doomed (dodsens) – indeed, was he really any more a dying man (Doende) on the cross than in Gethsemane! If the suffering on the cross was a death agony – ah, this agony in prayer was also a mortal combat; nor was it bloodless, for his sweat fell like drops of blood to the earth.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 63
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), Christ is the Way

Death , Suffering

“Several dozen journals now exist that print only verse. They don't publish literary reviews, just page after page of freshly minted poems. The heart sinks to see so many poems crammed so tightly together, like downcast immigrants in steerage. One can easily miss a radiant poem amid the many lackluster ones. It takes tremendous effort to read these small magazines with openness and attention. Few people bother, generally not even the magazines' contributors. The indifference to poetry in the mass media has created a monster of the opposite kind — journals that love poetry not wisely but too well.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Love , People , Effort , Reading

“It is true that the politician at the moment of his actions or if he explains his actions and justifies them cannot provide at the same time also great philosophy. But if he acts without philosophical and ethical foundations, he is in danger of making mistakes. He is in danger to sink into opportunism. He is even in danger of being a charlatan.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

Weggefährten - Erinnerungen und Reflexionen, Siedler-Verlag Berlin 1996, S. 156, ISBN 9783442755158, ISBN 978-3442755158

Time

“I thought I would try my hand at sailing. It was too small and kept sinking, so I decided to try a boat instead.”

Arthur M. Jolly (1969) American writer

Ishmael
Moby (No Last Name Given) (2014)

“There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share — black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book II, Ch. 14
My Antonia (1918)

Light , Appearance , Sun

“Optimism is the parent of despair, while pessimism allows the mind to accustom itself to the inevitable disappointments of human existence by degrees, just as some drugs induce a state of tolerance. Pessimists, moreover, have the better sense of humour, for they have a livelier apprehension of pretension and absurdity. In a meritocracy, furthermore, those who fail must either indulge in elaborate mental contortions to disguise reality from themselves or sink into a deep melancholy.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

British Medical Journal Views and Reviews: Desperate house calls (BMJ 2009;338:b212).

Disappointment , Optimism , Reality , Parent

“I do not exist, we faithfully insist,
While watching sink the heavy ship of everything we knew.
If ever You come near I'll hold up high a mirror
Lord, I could never show you anything as beautiful as You.”

Aaron Weiss

Messes of Men.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Beauty

“Behind man lies the abyss, nothingness; the Outsider knows this; it is his business to sink claws of iron into life to grasp it tighter than the indifferent bourgeois, to build, to Will, in spite of the abyss.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis...

Life , Business , Indifference

“When the heart sinks lower and the healing's slower, let's come closer.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Come Closer
Come Closer (2006)

Heart

“Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

"The Crooked Wood", p. 208
The Journey Home (1977)

Tree , Learning

“To-morrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realise that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for a centralised and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 494, Mussolini's declaration near the end of 1921
1920s

Idea , Time

“In the desert, initially, everywhere is like everywhere else—sky, sand, mountains. So far, this was the extent of what I’d seen in my involuntary roost. Then the day began to ebb, the world turned to topaz and gold, and the color of the sky seemed to sink away into the disc of the sun. I found I really could touch the beauty of it then, as I had touched its beauty so long ago when I was free to travel where I wished, and the city still owned me. Now, tinged with my sorrow, the loveliness was bittersweet, but strong as wine.”

Tanith Lee book Drinking Sapphire Wine

Part 2, Chapter 3 (pp. 69-70)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

World , Beauty , Color , Travel

“One day I was in rather a fix, so I went out. I strolled along in the dazzling sunlight of early spring, lost in thought, seeing and hearing nothing, really; forming no kind of picture of what was going on around me in the Saturday bustle of the country village. Nothing. Funny, it was so typical : one of those times when a writer feels stale, when his pen has been showing signs of going on of going on strike and will soon cease to obey him altogether. Driven by his restlessness, the writer goes away like a rat leaving a sinking ship…”

Marko Tapio

Marko Tapio, in: The Norseman, Vol. 15, 1957, p. 413

Feeling , Spring , Time , Country

“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang — home-going. So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit — waited on, watched over, noticed only by their Maker, each arriving at its own heaven-dealt destiny. All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast — all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity. 'Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

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

pages 439-440
("Trees towering … into eternity" are the next-to-last lines of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.)
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love , Life , Death , Law

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), p. 143, as cited in: Lawrence S. Bale (1992) " Gregory Bateson’s Theory of Mind: Practical Applications to Pedagogy http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/gbtom_patp.pdf". November 1992. p. 20

Behavior , Knowledge , Change

“Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 287

Religion

“So we beat the Croations at football and I was there yelling "Ah, you Crotes!" and this guy says "It's cro-at; learn to speak English." So I was about to retort when he said "Hang on, you're Omid Djalili! You're good! I said "Aww thanks." He says "What are you going to do next?" I said "I'm in a pantomime of Wind in the Willows. I play the TO-AD, OF TO-AD HALL! I get in my BO-AT! And it sinks because it can't FLO-AT! And when I get out of the river, I'm wet and cold so I put on my CO-AT! And I can't get in my house because it's full of ferrets and STO-ATS!"”

Omid Djalili (1965) Iranian-British stand-up comedian

Amusing wordplay but ultimately leads nowhere. The Telegraph.
No Agenda (2007)

Guy , Learning , Football , Housing

“[on reacting to racism] I don't wanna be the better person. I don't wanna rise above it. I do wanna sink down to their level. I am not gonna turn the other cheek. "I'mma gonna show you what cheek I'mma turn, OK!"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Personality

“Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.”

Erasmus Darwin book The Botanic Garden

The Botanic Garden (1791), Part i.

Death , Youth , Age , Cars

“I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!”

John Paul Jones (1747–1792) American naval officer

His much less famous response, in the late phase of the Battle of Flamborough Head, 23 September 1779, to an inquiry by his opponent (Captain Richard Pearson of the Royal Navy ship HMS Serapis) as to whether he was surrendering his ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard, which was by this time very seriously damaged.
:This was what some of his sailors, reported in British newspapers at the time, claimed he had said; Jones's official report merely stated that he had answered "in the most determined negative".

“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Wisdom , Way , Feeling , Nature

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

God , Light , Sun , Night

“Contemplation The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror wherein shines the Eternal Light of God. It has no attributes, And here all the works of Reason fail. It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him. Those who walk in the Divine Light discover in themselves the UnwalledEven though the eagle, king of birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same It is neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all…Behold! such a following of the Way that is WaylessThe Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God This revelation of the Father lifts the soul above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple, pure, spotless, Empty of all things; And it is in this state of perfect emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance is a knowing that is unconditioned,
For ever dwelling above the Reason.
Never can it sink down into the Reason,
And above it can the Reason never climb.
The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror.
Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
It has no attributes,
And here all the works of Reason fail.
It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
That which Unconditioned,
Is above the Reason, not without it:
It beholds all things without amazement.
Amazement is far beneath it:
The contemplative life is without amazement.
That which is Unconditioned, it knows not what;
For it is above all, and is neither This nor That.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

Love , Life , God , Way

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 7

Friendship , Wine

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain , People , World , Education

“Veins full of disappearing inkVomitting in the kitchen sink.<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Fond Farewell.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

“Four-point-two kilometres is a long way for a frozen body to sink.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 1, describing his North Pole swim (2007)
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Way

“… there are people in this administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things…”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

The Guardian, ibid.

People

“I find it remarkable that some groups say “We don’t support ISIL” as if that alone proves their anti-extremist credentials. And let’s be clear Al-Qaeda don’t support ISIL. So we can’t let the bar sink to that level. Condemning a mass-murdering, child-raping organisation cannot be enough to prove you’re challenging the extremists.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Support

“The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Quoted in The American Mercury (1961), in a letter from Cleveland to his law partner, Wilson S. Bissell, February 15th, 1894. https://books.google.com/books?id=BIsqAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+present+danger%22+cleveland+bissell&dq=%22The+present+danger%22+cleveland+bissell&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj68-CIhenSAhXpCMAKHdsXCKQQ6AEIHjAB.

Democracy , Weather

“There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every reproductive being the best possible suited to its condition that its kind, or organized matter, is susceptible of, which appears intended to model the physical and mental or instinctive powers to their highest perfection and to continue them so. This law sustains the lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his wiles. As nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing — either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix B

Life , Disease , Law , Nature

“The motives for conceiving modern systems engineering are to be found, at least in part, in past disasters. Arthur D. Hall III [1989] cites: the chemical plant leakage in Bhopal (1986); the explosion of the NASA Challenger space shuttle (1986) and the Apollo fire (1967); the sinking of the Titanic (1912); the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl (1986) and the disaster at Three Mile Island power plant (1979). He cites, too, the capture of markets by Japan from the U. S., the decline in US productivity and the failure of the US secondary school system. He identifies the millions of people dying of starvation every year while other nations stockpile surplus food, medical disasters such as heart disease, while governments subsidize grains used to produce high cholesterol meat, milk and eggs; and many more. One implication is clear: systems engineering faces challenges well beyond the sphere of engineering.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 75-76

People , Disease , School , Food

“Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honor sinks, where commerce long prevails.
— Oliver Goldsmith, "The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society'" http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/golds02.html (1764). This quote can be found on the Oliver Goldsmith page.
Misattributed

“As more and more good ideas come under the protection of patents, it may become increasingly unlikely that any one program can incorporate the state of the art in user-interface design without sinking into a quagmire of unending royalty payments and legal battles.”

Nathaniel Borenstein (1957) American computer scientist

[Borenstein, Nathaniel S., Programming as if people mattered : friendly programs, software engineering, and other noble delusions, 1991, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 9780691087528, 52, 4. print.]
Attributed

Art , Idea

“I was born into a world of just under two billion people today there are nearly seven billion of us. Whenever I hear those numbers I can honestly say I find it incredible, triple the number of human beings in what seems like the blink of an eye and the world transformed utterly. Human population density is a factor in every environmental problem I have ever encountered, from urban sprawl to urban overcrowding; disappearing tropical forests to ugly sinks of plastic waste, and now the relentless increase of atmospheric pollution. I've spent much of the last 50 years seeking wilderness filming animals in their natural habitat and, to some extent, avoiding humans. But, over the years, true wilderness has become harder to find. m1s58-m3s03”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

People , World , Nature , Problem

“For which he wex a litel red for shame,
Whan he the peple upon him herde cryen,
That to beholde it was a noble game,
How sobreliche he caste doun his yen.
Criseyda gan al his chere aspyen,
And let so softe it in her herte sinke
That to herself she seyde, “Who yaf me drinke?””

Geoffrey Chaucer book Troilus and Criseyde

Book 2, line 645-651
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)

Game , Drink

“The current of Time's river
Will carry off all human deeds
And sink into oblivion
All peoples, kingdoms and their kings.

And if there's something that remains
Through sounds of horn and lyre,
It too will disappear into the maw of time
And not avoid the common pyre… [lines broken]”

Gavrila Derzhavin (1743–1816) Russian poet

Рѣка временъ въ своемъ стремленьи
Уноситъ всѣ дѣла людей
И топитъ въ пропасти забвенья
Народы, царства и царей.

А если что и остается
Чрезъ звуки лиры и трубы,
То вѣчности жерломъ пожрется
И общей не уйдетъ судьбы!
Lines found at Derzhavin's table after his death.
For another translation, see Time's river in its rushing current

People , Time

“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

I Strove with None (1853). The work is identified in Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919) as Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.
Quoted in W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge, The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia, 1944, p. 161.

Love , Life , Art , Nature

“My body is white; my fate, softly rounded,
rising and sinking like mountains in streams.
Whatever way hands may shape me,
at center my heart is red and true.”

Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) Vietnamese poet

"The Floating Cake" (a metaphor for "woman")
Spring Essence (2000)

Fate , Way , Mountain , Heart

“When it comes to getting away, big pits are a handicap. A quarter-pound seed isn't going to be blown about by anything less than a hurricane, and in water an avocado pit sinks.”

Roger Swain (1949) American television personality

p. 11 https://books.google.com/books?id=UutGAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=handicap
Field Days: Journal of an Itinerant Biologist (1983)

Water

“Towards the end of the twelfth century, while Western Europe was still wavering between a dying Roman influence and a dawning Gothicism, preliminaries to a medieval era which would make possible the development of a world-wide humanism, Asia had already lived through her classical period and, sinking into decay, was preparing to face a long period of political and spiritual unrest. While India was beginning to suffer under the yoke of the victorious Mussulman, who had come down on her from the mountains of Afghanistan and the plains of Iran, and while the domination of the Khmers was reaching its climax at Angkor, China, under pressure from the barbarians of the north, was withdrawing to the south where the Song empire, thinking itself safe from invasions, continued to live a life of luxury.”

Louis Frédéric (1923–1996) French scholar

Frédéric, L. (1984). Daily life in Japan at the time of the samurai, 1185-1603. Tokyo: Tuttle.

Life , World , Mountain , Thinking

“With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 7, Incarnate Human Gods.

Art , Knowledge

“For me this career and that I am privileged to do a job I love to do, means really, really much. I would never change any moment from my life. When making music I sink myself into the process as deeply as I can and forget all of the success.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Anna interview (2005)

Love , Life , Music , Change

“UKIP’s manifesto was a rehash of its 2015 offering. Which was good, but there was barely anything for us to sink our teeth into. Burka ban? Great. I had it in my leadership manifesto last year. But let’s face it, the people keen on such a thing would have probably voted UKIP anyway. Where were the new, flatter tax plans? Where was the digital strategy? Where were the “wedge issue” moments that drew a distinction between the political establishment and the insurgent populist party? I didn’t see any.”

Raheem Kassam (1986) British journalist and politician

Dear UKIP Centrists, You Failed. Now Get Out of Nigel’s Way! http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/06/09/kassam-dear-ukip-centrists-failed-now-get-nigels-way/ (June 9, 2017)

People

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 71

Hope , Soul , Suicide , Affliction

“Far back in history, there is evidence that men who have attempted to solve the riddle of water have been bitterly attacked. Every attempt to explain the nature of water in old books has been demolished in the later editions. In any case, maintaining the sense of mystery about water ensures the prosperity of the capital intensive economy, for financial interest thrives only on a defective economy. If the riddle surrounding the origins of water were solved, it would be possible to make as much pure water available as required at any location; in this way vast areas of desert would become fertile. As a consequence, the selling values of the produce would sink so low that there would be no more incentive to speculate, or to develop agricultural machinery. The concept of unrestricted production and cheap machine power is so revolutionary, that the way of life all over the world would experience a change. Maintaining the mystery of water, therefore, maintains the value of capital, so every attempt to come nearer to an explanation is attacked.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Life , Men , Books , World

“There must be some deep-rooted anti-social principle in every man's nature, so dearly does he love aught that separates him from his kind; or is it but one of the many shapes taken by that mental kaleidoscope, vanity, the varying and the glittering, the desire of distinction, sinking into that of notice?”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love , Nature

“But hark! what shriek of death comes in the gale,
And in the distant ray what glimmering sail
Bends to the storm?—Now sinks the note of fear!
Ah? wretched mariners!—no more shall day
Unclose his cheering eye to light ye on your way!”

Ann Radcliffe book The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Mysteries of Udolpho, Shipwreck; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 704.
Attributed

Death , Fear , Way , Light

“When the day is done,
Down to earth then sinks the sun,
Along with everything that was lost and won,
When the day is done.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Day is Done
Song lyrics, Five Leaves Left (1969)

Sun

“Our common speech contains numberless verbs with which to describe the infliction of violence or cruelty or brutality on others. It only really contains one common verb that describes the effect of violence or cruelty or brutality on those who, rather than suffering from it, inflict it. That verb is the verb to brutalize. A slaveholder visits servitude on his slaves, lashes them, degrades them, exploits them, and maltreats them. In the process, he himself becomes brutalized. This is a simple distinction to understand and an easy one to observe. In the recent past, idle usage has threatened to erode it. Last week was an especially bad one for those who think the difference worth preserving…Col. Muammar Qaddafi's conduct [killing his protesters] is far worse than merely brutal—it is homicidal and sadistic…and even if a headline can't convey all that, it can at least try to capture some of it. Observe, then, what happens when the term is misapplied. The error first robs the language of a useful expression and then ends up by gravely understating the revolting reality it seeks to describe…Far from being brutalized by four decades of domination by a theatrical madman, the Libyan people appear fairly determined not to sink to his level and to be done with him and his horrible kin. They also seem, at the time of writing, to want this achievement to represent their own unaided effort. Admirable as this is, it doesn't excuse us from responsibility. The wealth that Qaddafi is squandering is the by-product of decades of collusion with foreign contractors. The weapons that he is employing against civilians were not made in Libya; they were sold to him by sophisticated nations.”

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

2010s, 2011

People , Error , Understanding , Thinking

“"If we can increase the scope of the industry, we can re-energise the global market and lift Japan out of depression - that is Nintendo's mission.". Regarding lukewarm GameCube sales which had yielded the company's first reported operating loss in over 100 years, Yamauchi continued: "The DS represents a critical moment for Nintendo's success over the next two years. If it succeeds, we rise to the heavens, if it fails, we sink into hell."”

Hiroshi Yamauchi (1927–2013) Japanese businessman

Hell , Loss , Success

“For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Life , Men , Money , People

“Yes, so it is that knowledge itself must die in order to blossom forth again in death as will; the freedom of thought, belief, and conscience, these wonderful flowers of three centuries will sink back into the lap of mother earth so that a new freedom, the freedom will, will be nourished with its most noble juices.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

Death , Flowers , Knowledge , Freedom

“If Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England and it would stop there only because it could go no lower.”

Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer

Page 283
The Best of Myles (1968)

“That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

“A divorced man talked about his experiences with women:Everybody is looking for a winner. They're impressed by position and status even if they're not being treated well. They evaluate a man by such things as his dress and his home.If you start saying you want freedom and space, they can't handle it. You can just tell that they wouldn't be there if you didn't have money. … It's really easy to get laid. Just go to a nice place dressed nice—everyone's looking for a well-off guy.Society preaches that you must be this or you must be that. Success has nothing to do with human qualities. I found that it was empty. I couldn't feel a damn thing emotionally. I was numb. Everything was in order, but nothing—no tears, no real happiness, no real sadness either. When you can't find anything to be sad about, that's really sad! I'm getting so I don't want to do anything. I'm emotionally upset by humanity. Not that I'm an angel, but it's discouraging to see that there's only one place you can go. Everyday I almost feel like vomiting.I've always had people crash on me, but I've never been able to crash on them. It scares the hell out of me. There's no one who cares enough. The only reason I'm here is to keep the whole damn thing up. I wonder why I can't sink. It's scary.</blockquote”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Liberation Crunch: Getting the Worst of Both Worlds, pp. 146–147
The New Male (1979)

Money , People , Sadness , Angels

“The sands of time are sinking
The dawn of heaven breaks;
The summer morn I've sighed for,
The fair, sweet morn, awakes.
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwellth
In Immanuel's hand”

Anne Ross Cousin (1824–1906) Scottish musician and songwriter

Verse 1 Hymn 776 Baptist Hymnal.

Time , Summer

“So in this way of writing without thinking,
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.”

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536–1608) English politician and poet

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset "On Mr Edward Howard, upon his British Princes"; cited from Geoffrey Grigson (ed.) The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) p. 74
Misattributed

Way , Thinking

“…1660 virtually starts a new era - an era in which the old land-owning class sinks and the new middle-class rises, an era too in which the English character seems to have become subtly changed. A sense of guilt seems to permeate all pleasure, and this has continued to the present day…. the many living monuments to Puritan rule…. the Englishman’s peculiar restraint - the coldness that repels so many Africans and Asians, an unwillingness to ‘let oneself go’.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Pleasure , Sense , Change

“What was I to do? It was plain that my resignation would not prevent the military occupation, would indeed merely give Hitler and opportunity to introduce a hundred per cent Nazi Arrow-Cross regime. The precedent of the Italian debacle with its horrible attendant circumstances constituted a timely warning. So long as I continued head of the state, the Germans would have to show a certain circumspection. They would have to leave the Hungarian Army under my orders, and would therefore be unable to incorporate it into the German Army. While I was in charge, they could not attempt putting the Arrow-Cross Party into office to do their deadly work of murdering Hungarian patriots, of exterminating the 800,000 Hungarian Jews and the tens of thousands of refugees who had sought sanctuary in Hungary. It would have been easier for me to make the great gesture of abdication. I would have been spared many a denunciation. But to leave a sinking ship, especially one that needed her captain more than ever, was a step I could not bring myself to take. At the time it was more important to me that Hitler promised to withdraw his troops from Hungary as soon as a government acceptable to him had been appointed.”

Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) Hungarian Admiral and Regent 1920-1944

Source: Memoirs, pp. 260-261

Time

“They found me in the gutter. The night was the only thing I had left and not much of it at that. I heard the car stop, the doors open and shut and two voices talking. A pair of arms jerked me to my feet and held me there.
"Drunk," the cop said.
The other one turned me around into the light. "He don't smell bad. That cut on his head didn't come from a fall either."
"Mugged?"
"Maybe."
I didn't give a damn which way they called it. They were both wrong anyhow. Two hours ago I was drunk. Not now. Two hours ago I was a roaring lion. Then the bottle sailed across the room. No lion left now.
Now was a time when I wasn't anything. Nothing was left inside except the feeling a ship must have when it's torpedoed, sinks and hits bottom.”

Mickey Spillane book The Girl Hunters

The Girl Hunters (1962)

Cars , Jerk , Way , Feeling

“The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Mina Harker
Dracula (1897)

Hate , Peace , Imagination , Mountain

“That the U. N. Human Rights Council chose to honor an apologist for genocide perpetrators only underscores the inverted morality of this Orwellian body. Just when we thought the council had already reached rock bottom, today it found a way to sink even deeper.”

Hillel Neuer Canadian activist

U.N. Rights Council Backs 'Censorship' Watchdog, Elevates U.S. Foes http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/18/suffers-blow-united-nations-council-backs-censorship-watchdog.html, Fox News, 2010-06-18

Way