Quotes about wave (995 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“Mr. Hitler had to leave the stadium early, but after winning I hurried up to the radio booth. When I passed near the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me and I waved back at him.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Quoted in "Owens, Back, Gets Hearty Reception" by Louis Effrat, The New York Times, 25 August 1936, p.25 http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=940CEFDC1E30E13BBC4D51DFBE66838D629EDE.
1930s

“Algebraic geometry has developed in waves, each with its own language and point of view. The late nineteenth century saw the function-theoretic approach of Riemann, the more geometric approach of Brill and Noether, and the purely algebraic approach of Kronecker, Dedekind, and Weber. The Italian school followed with Castelnuovo, Enriques, and Severi, culminating in the classification of algebraic surfaces. Then came the twentieth-century "American" school of Chow, Weil, and Zariski, which gave firm algebraic foundations to the Italian intuition. Most recently, Serre and Grothendieck initiated the French school, which has rewritten the foundations of algebraic geometry in terms of schemes and cohomology, and which has an impressive record of solving old problems with new techniques. Each of these schools has introduced new concepts and methods.”

Robin Hartshorne book Algebraic Geometry

Algebraic Geometry, Springer, (1977), p. xiii
Algebraic Geometry (1977)

School , Problem

“Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train. In bright array they seek the work of war, Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air. Shall I to Washington their praise recite? Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

War , Fight , Training

“The ocean ate the last of the land and poured into the smoking gulf, thereby giving up all it had ever conquered. From the new-flooded lands it flowed again, uncovering death and decay; and from its ancient and immemorial bed it trickled loathsomely, uncovering nighted secrets of the years when Time was young and the gods unborn. Above the waves rose weedy remembered spires. The moon laid pale lilies of light on dead London, and Paris stood up from its damp grave to be sanctified with star-dust. Then rose spires and monoliths that were weedy but not remembered; terrible spires and monoliths of lands that men never knew were lands…”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Death , Men , God , Secret

“The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Statement inspired by the work of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor (18 Jun 1964)
Context: The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body's total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?

Law

“Ambition
Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink
The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

The Cup, Act i, Scene 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men , Drink , Sea , Madness

“Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that. It is that everywhere. What are we, we chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse."
"And then," said the comrade at our side, whom we could not recognize even by his voice, "to-morrow it begins again. It began again the day before yesterday, and all the days before that!"

War

“Time and those waves are at the disposal of anyone who wants to use them.”

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

As quoted in No Commercial Potential : The Saga of Frank Zappa (1972) by David Walley, p. 3.
Context: I consider that the building materials are exactly the same as what anybody else makes the thing out of. It's just the way they look at those materials is perhaps a narrower perspective. Time and those waves are at the disposal of anyone who wants to use them.

Time

“Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves (1931), pp. 39-40
Context: Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.

Tree , Grass , Time

“A State of Mind. Woke up perhaps at 3. Oh its beginning it coming – the horror – physically like a painful wave swelling about the heart – tossing me up. I'm unhappy unhappy! Down – God, I wish I were dead.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Wednesday 15 September, 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)
Context: A State of Mind. Woke up perhaps at 3. Oh its beginning it coming – the horror – physically like a painful wave swelling about the heart – tossing me up. I'm unhappy unhappy! Down – God, I wish I were dead. Pause. But why am I feeling like this? Let me watch the wave rise. I watch. Vanessa. Children. Failure. Yes, I detect that. Failure failure. (The wave rises). Oh they laughed at my taste in green paint. Wave crashes. I wish I were dead! I've only a few years to live I hope. I can't face this horror any more – (this is the wave spreading out over me). This goes on; several times, with varieties of horror. Then, at the crisis, instead of the pain remaining intense, it becomes rather vague. I doze. I wake with a start. The wave again! The irrational pain: the sense of failure; generally some specific incident, as for example my taste in green paint, or buying a new dress, or asking Dadie for the week-end, tacked on. At last I say, watching as dispassionately as I can, Now take a pull of yourself. No more of this. I shove to throw to batter down. I begin to march blindly forward. I feel obstacles go down. I say it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I become rigid and straight, and sleep again, and half wake and feel the wave beginning and watch the light whitening and wonder how, this time, breakfast and daylight will overcome it; and then hear L. in the passage and simulate, for myself as well as for him, great cheerfulness; and generally am cheerful, by the time breakfast is over. Does everyone go through this state? Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life.

God , Pain , Heart , Dead

“The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies. Take away the crest of the wave, and there is no trough.
Here is someone who has never seen a cat. He is looking through a narrow slit in a fence, and, on the other side, a cat walks by. He sees first the head, then the less distinctly shaped furry trunk, and then the tail. Extraordinary! The cat turns round and walks back, and again he sees the head, and a little later the tail. This sequence begins to look like something regular and reliable. Yet again, the cat turns round, and he witnesses the same regular sequence: first the head, and later the tail. Thereupon he reasons that the event head is the invariable and necessary cause of the event tail, which is the head's effect. This absurd and confusing gobbledygook comes from his failure to see that head and tail go together: they are all one cat.
The cat wasn't born as a head which, sometime later, caused a tail; it was born all of a piece, a head-tailed cat. Our observer's trouble was that he was watching it through a narrow slit, and couldn't see the whole cat at once.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 26-27

Way , Cats , Failure , Question

“It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

"Adventure's End" in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) edited by George Plimpton, p. 85
Context: It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest.
It was 11:30 AM. My first sensation was one of relief — relief that the long grind was over, that the summit had been reached before our oxygen supplies had dropped to a critical level; and relief that in the end the mountain had been kind to us in having a pleasantly rounded cone for its summit instead of a fearsome and unapproachable cornice. But mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. I seemed difficult to grasp that we'd got there. I was too tired and too conscious of the long way down to safety really to feel any great elation. But as the fact of our success thrust itself more clearly into my mind, I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction spread through my body — a satisfaction less vociferous but more powerful than I had ever felt on a mountain top before. I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging form his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations.

“On happiness: "For me, it’s harmony resulting from the cosmic wave, not the happiness resulting from the social wave"”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1979

Happiness

“Midnight on the water
I saw the ocean's daughter
Walking on a wave's chicane
Staring as she called my name And I can't get it out of my head”

Jeff Lynne (1947) British rock musician

"" ("Walking on a wave's chicane" are the official lyrics, but these are often heard and quoted as "Walking on a wave she came")
Eldorado, A Symphony (1974)
Context: Midnight on the water
I saw the ocean's daughter
Walking on a wave's chicane
Staring as she called my name And I can't get it out of my head
No, I can't get it out of my head
Now my old world is gone for dead
'Cos I can't get it out of my head

Water , Daughters

“I refuse to be held responsible for bringing back a wave of pasty-faced people into the world. ”

Brian Molko (1972) musician

People , World

“Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields–there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze–and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Peace , Wisdom , Age

“Socialism and rationalism are to this day the touchstones of humanity, the rocks which lie in the course of revolution and science. Groups of swimmers, driven by reflection or the waves of circumstance against these rocks, break up at once into two camps, which, under different disguises, remain the same throughout all history, and may be distinguished either in a great political party or in a group of a dozen young men. One represents logic; the other, history: one stands for dialectics; the other for evolution. Truth is the main object of the former, and feasibility of the latter.”

Alexander Herzen book My Past and Thoughts

ibid, Ch. 8, s. 12
My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

History , Truth , Lie , Science

“These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.”

Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)

Time , Heart , Music , Distant

“Coral reefs are farmers. They provide food, income and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Coral reefs are security guards. The structures that they build protect our shorelines from storm surge and waves, and the biological systems that they house filter the water and make it safer for us to work and play. Coral reefs are chemists. The molecules that we're discovering on coral reefs are increasingly important in the search for new antibiotics and new cancer drugs. And coral reefs are artists. The structures that they build are some of the most beautiful things on planet Earth. And this beauty is the foundation of the tourism industry in many countries with few or little other natural resources.”

Kristen Marhaver American marine biologist

Source: How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_how_we_re_growing_baby_corals_to_rebuild_reefs (October 2015)

Housing , Search , Food , Country

“How puny and insignificant is the evanescent drop when compared with the waves and billows of God’s limitless and everlasting Ocean, and how utterly contemptible must every contingent and perishable thing appear when brought face to face with the uncreated, the unspeakable glory of the Eternal!”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh

God , Appearance

“Can you see that this “I” is fleeting, a temporary formation, like a wave pattern on the surface of the water? Who is it that sees this? Who is it that is aware of the fleetingness of your physical and psychological form? I am. This is the deeper “I” that has nothing to do with past and future.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Water , Past , Future

“When we have a willingness to ask that first question, Who Am I?, and then to create the answer, it is immensely powerful to not simply respond to the question intellectually, as an intellectual excursion, but to create a response that makes sense to our Soul. A response that announces Who We Choose To Be, as opposed to who we imagine ourselves to be. Who I choose to be is an Individuation of Divinity, a wave on the Ocean of God.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Soul , Imagination , God , Question

“Some of you are drowning, trying to catch every “next BIG wave”… When had you stayed faithful to the first idea you committed to, you'd be walking on water by now.”

Joshua King Madrid (1998)

Source: JetSet Instagram Caption: https://www.instagram.com/p/CqJWWZAvoY2/

Faith , Water , Idea

“Songs to Herself:
She waved at all the people on the trains & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Variant: She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Life , People , Way , Singing

“Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Life

“Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean,
we can't separate ourselves from one another.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love , Sun , Parting , Sea

“I always thought that 'Good things happen to those who do the wave' No wonder I've been so confused”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“I want to explain how exhausted I am. Even in my dreams. How I wake up tired. How I’m being drowned by some kind of black wave.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

Dreams

“"A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of-"
He waved a hand. "Faeries. I know."
"I was going to say muggers," said Clary. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary and Jace, pg. 307
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Thinking

“Intense fear comes in waves; the body can’t stand it for long at a time.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Fear , Time

“Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."
Ma says it but on mute.
I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

Time

“There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.”

Nick Flynn book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Way

“Oh, I would while away the hours,
Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song,
I'd be gliding all the lilies as I waved about my willie,
If I only had a schlong.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Flowers , Heart

“I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.”

Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) German film director, photographer, actress and dancer

Life , Feeling , Heart

“Nereus spun and expanded, turning into a killer whale, but I grabbed his dorsal fin as he burst out of the water.
A whole bunch of tourists went, "Whoa!"
I managed to wave at the crowd.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Water

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.”

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

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

Dance

“I glanced up to see Liz and smiled. "Thank you."

"I just went along for the ride. After that happened-" She waved at Derek. "You know how blind people need Seeing Eye dogs? Well, apparently werewolves could really use Opening Door poltergeists.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

People , Smile , Dogs

“We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Tree , Sea

“It’s only the sea,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn’t go inside because it’s a labyrinth and you may never come out again.”

Tove Jansson book Comet in Moominland

Source: Comet in Moominland

Singing , Sea

“I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.”

Gustave Flaubert book November

Source: November

Men

“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Books , Flowers , Winter , Summer

“The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Water

“Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.”

Iris Murdoch book The Message to the Planet

The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 509.

People , Distant

“One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Vol. 1, Chap. 68. Compare: "On dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons" (translated: "It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions"), Voltaire, Letter to M. le Riche. 1770; "J'ai toujours vu Dieu du coté des gros bataillons (translated: "I have always noticed that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions"), De la Ferté to Anne of Austria.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

“History says don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.”

Seamus Heaney The Cure at Troy

"Doubletake", from The Cure at Troy (1990)
Poetry Quotes, The Cure at Troy
Context: History says don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.