Quotes about wave (995 quotes, page 3) | Quotes of famous people

“Are we fighting?" I asked Morelli.
"No. Were discussing."
"Are you sure?"
"Am I yelling?" Morelli asked. "Is my face purple? Are the cords on my neck standing out? Am I waving my arms around?"
"No."
"The were not fighting.”

Janet Evanovich book Sizzling Sixteen

Source: Sizzling Sixteen

Fight

“Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Life , Learning

“As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping (2004)
Context: You say we are not one, you say truly there are two of us. Yes, there were two of us, but we were one. As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

“There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Armies of the Night (1968)

World

“How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Hope , Sea , Despair

“I brought you some coffee.” he held out the cup but she waved it away.
“I hate that stuff. It tastes like feet.”
At that he smiled. “How would you know what feet taste like?”
“I just know.”
-Luke and Clary, pg.209-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Hate , Smile , Coffee

“I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me.
The sea.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Study , Light , Water , Sea

“people who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

sic
Cut It Out (2004)
Source: Wall and Piece

People

“A massive fir, it rose to nearly touch the ceiling at the far end of the ballroom. When Will asked Charlotte how on earth it had gotten in there, she had only waved her hands and said something about Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy.
"And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says.
Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them.
"Lamb roast. Am I invited?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Thinking , Housing

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Goodbye , Love

“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Source: Be Here Now

God , Light

“Disagreements over money are the biggest cause of divorce."

She waved her hand. "Absolutely no problem. Your money is our money. My money is my money." She wrote away.

"I should make you negotiate with Phoebe.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Match Me If You Can

Money , Problem

“Let me guess. The big one is due in on the north shore? (Dante)
Yes. So let’s make this quick. I have a board, a wave, and a babe with my name on them and I would like to take advantage of all three. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

“Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves
that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Color , Change

“It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Beauty

“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Smile , Dreams , Distant , Waiting

“Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Feeling

“The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Life , World , Grass

“It was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world… on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

World

“Remember, this thing is small. It's not like the wolfships. It'll ride over the waves, not crash through them. So we're safe as houses."
He wasn't sure about the last two statements, but they seemed logical to him.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Icebound Land

Housing

“There are two kinds of people,’ she’d said. ‘Those who coast through life like ducks in a row, following one after the other, and those who ride the waves.’” Tears spilled down my cheeks, and my voice cracked. “‘Ride the waves, baby, and live. Live.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Life , People , Tear , Baby

“The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Parting

“I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;
Maelström of passions in that hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;
And in small compass the dark waters cram.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Collected Poems

God , World , Water , Passion

“Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Time , Heart

“Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Peaches

Feeling

“Surfing?” he asked. She laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the water. The wailing faded to background noise. Annabeth wondered if anyone had ever laughed in Tartarus before—just a pure, simple laugh of pleasure. She doubted it.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Pleasure , Water

“An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Guilty Pleasures

Source: Guilty Pleasures

“Maybe love is thinking that every time your partner does or says something mundane that you want to start a Mexican wave from here to Uzbekistan in utter delight.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Love , Thinking , Time

“This is insane," I said blankly. "I'm the instrument of an all-powerful primordial deity's wave of chaos and destruction."

"That's kind of extreme" said Dante jovially. "It's not like you work for Google or anything.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

“Unless you call attention
to your presence
who will know you're there?

Even a country
has to weave and wave a flag
as proof of its existence.”

Rod McKuen (1933–2015) American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer

Country

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul , Flowers , Solitude , Light

“The marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It's repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense. Both prefer a policy of being "cautious soldiers," "incrementalists" who shun upheavals and vote the status quo, although they subscribe to this policy for different reasons. Brooks worships the status quo because he has no penis and wants to spend the rest of his life buying periwinkle bath towels without troubling interruptions of conscience. The DLC, a nonprofit created in the mid-1980s to help big business have a say in the Democratic Party platform, supports the status quo because they are paid agents of the commercial interests that define it. Moreover, Brooks and the DLC have this in common: While they both frown on the open flag-waving and ostentatious religiosity of the talk-radio right-wing as being gauche and in bad form, they're only truly offended by people of their own background who happen to be idealistic. Hence the recurring backlash by both against the various angry electoral challenges to the establishment of the Democratic Party.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20060808224928/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/39862/

Life , Marriage , Children , People

“We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now"”

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

they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Hunger , God , Age , Peace

“Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Мысль и красота, подобно урагану и волнам, не должны знать привычных, определенных форм.
A Letter (uncertain date, story not published by Chekhov)

Beauty

“How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? How do you keep a wave upon the sand?' These words from The Sound of Music bring out the elusive nature of chaos. In life, most things cannot be captured for long. It is like trying to encapsulate time itself.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. vii.

Life , Music , Nature , Time

“"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LIX (last lines)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

Justice , Sport , Time

“Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 285).

Love , Learning

“The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss.
Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. … But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Fear , Sea

“A hundred years ago—or even a couple of generations ago—you do not encounter the sort of waving of the bloody shirt of prejudice that greets you on all sides now. Men did not profess such indignation that other men had differing convictions and viewpoints. They rather expected to encounter these, and to argue with them as best they could.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 1.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Men

“Earthquakes radiate waves with periods of tenths of seconds to several minutes. Rocks behave like elastic solids at these frequencies. Elastic solids allow a variety of wave types and this makes the ground motion after an earthquake or explosion (called an event) quite complex. There are two basic types of elastic wave: one involving compression and rarefaction of the elastic material in the direction of propagation of the wave, and one involving no compression but shear of the elastic material perpendicular to its direction of propagation. These are called P and S waves respectively, for primary and secondary since the P wave travels fastest and arrives first.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

[Seismology and plate tectonics, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990, http://books.google.com/books?id=tZRxPzwoChIC&pg=PA4] (pp. 4–5)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)

Travel

“The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. "Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold — yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life — a life that dwells in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the Eternal Calm!”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity

Love , Life , Wisdom , Money

“A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky:
There eke the soft delights that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh;
But whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest
Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.”

James Thomson (poet) The Castle of Indolence

Canto I, Stanza 6.
The Castle of Indolence (1748)

Pleasure , Dreams , Summer

“In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form... Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Gustave Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!... These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.... but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You'd rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), pp. 156-157, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Love , Truth , Feeling , Imagination

“I like the fact that I'm involved in a career that gives me so many different mediums to perform in. The entertainment industry in the last 10 years has been so fragmented, from scripted programming to reality. There's work not just on TV and in film, but you know, on your cell phone, on the Internet. There's so many [venues] now, and each of them looking for quality content, that, you know, I'm just going with the flow. And I'm having fun with every wave.”

Ian Ziering (1964) American actor

'Sharknado's' Ian Ziering: 'Maybe This Is My Pulp Fiction Moment' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sharknados-ian-ziering-maybe-is-my-pulp-fiction-moment-584659 (July 12, 2013)

Reality

“They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Chapter VI http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abeslmca3t.html
1830s, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

Freedom

“Ah, the immortal ocean.
Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.”

Kage Baker book The Children of the Company

Source: The Children of the Company (2005), Chapter 4, “Son Observe the Time” (p. 165)

Beauty , Fight , Perfection , Sea

“How could that have happened? … Even if it was a hand of God … I’d read – and I don’t know how they know this – but in approximately 3000 BC there was a massive undersea volcano and earthquake, which created a tsunami wave that had to have been a couple of hundred feet high. Just off the heel of Italy. Diagonally across you’re staring right up the mouth of the Nile, so I’m wondering if that had anything to do with that.”

Ridley Scott (1937) English film director and film producer

On the parting of the Red Sea in the tales of Moses, as quoted in "Exodus: Gods And Kings - How Ridley Scott And Christian Bale Are Rebooting The Biblical Epic" at Yahoo Movies (16 September 2014) https://uk.yahoo.com/movies/exodus-gods-and-kings-set-visit-97667462271.html

God , Reading

“It is a night of summer,—and the sea
Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity.
Soft o'er the deep-blue wave the moonlight breaks;
Gleaming, from out the white clouds of its zone”

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

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Sleep , Summer , Sea , Night

“On sound volume and arrangement: "No, high volume levels cause less harm than the awkward arrangement of sounds. Assuming that the sound is a wave: if this wave is not balanced by itself, it causes great damage when it enters the ear. I have tested this on a few people in my studio. I made them listen to two tracks. The first track was considered too loud, whereas the second track was actually louder but more balanced".”

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

1979

People

“Hayek says that the problem with classical liberalism was that it was not pure enough. The government needed to restrict itself to establishing the rule of law and to using antitrust to break up monopolies. It was the overreach of the government beyond those limits, via central banking and social democracy, that caused all the trouble. A democratic government needs to limit itself to rule of law and antitrust–and perhaps soup kitchens and shelters. And what if democracy turns out not to produce a government that limits itself to those activities? Then, Hayek says, so much the worse for democracy. A Pinochet is then called for to, in a Lykourgan moment, minimalize the state. After social democracy has been leveled and the rubble cleared away, then–perhaps–a limited range of issues can be discussed and debated by a–limited–restored democracy, with some kind of group of right-wing army officers descended from latifundistas Council of Guardians in the background to ensure that property remains sacred and protected, and the government small enough to fit in a bathtub. […] Hayek was formed in Austria. From his perspective the property and enterprise respecting Imperial Habsburg government of Franz Josef eager to make no waves, to hold what it has, and to keep the lid off the pressure cooker appears not unattractive. This is especially so when you contrasted would be really existing authoritarian alternatives: anti-Semitic populist demagogue mayors of Vienna; nationalist Serbian or Croatian politicians interested in maintaining popular legitimacy by waging class war or ethnic war; separatists who seek independence and then one man, one vote, one time. An “authoritarian” after the manner of Franz Josef looks quite attractive in this context–and if you convince yourself but they are as dedicated to small government neoliberalism as you are, and that the Lykourgan moment of the form will be followed by soft rule and popular assent, so much the better. And if the popular assent is not forthcoming? Then Hayek can blame the socialists, and say it is their fault for not understanding how good a deal they are offered.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

War , Law , Democracy , Understanding

“One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 499.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Art , Angels , Light , Memory

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men , God , Truth , Fear

“First off, the whole point of airborne troops is surprise: you don't know they're coming until they're there. But because Cain arrived 24 hours after the first wave, the surprise was gone. And to make matters worse, the landing zone was some eight miles from the bridge. So, thanks to some incompetent planning by the top brass in England, the Germans knew that Cain and his men were coming, they knew where he landed, they knew where he was going, and they had the wherewithal to do something about it.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

The Victoria Cross: For Valour (2003)

Men

“p>A bird in the gusty wind
Deftly changes directionA youth tries to pick up
A pennyThe grapevine in fantasy
Stretches its tentaclesThe Wave in retreat
Arches its back.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"Curve" [Huxian]

Youth , Bird , Change

“Therefore, an environment against caste-based politics was created and the BJP wave along with Mr[. ] Modi’s candidature as the prime ministerial candidate helped in creating a favourable environment for the BJP and making our foundation strong. It helped in creating votes for us and our political strategy helped in converting these votes into parliamentary seats.”

Amit Shah (1964) Indian politician

"Exclusive Amit Shah Interview: People are waiting to vote for Modi," 2013, "Sunday Interview: We had 450 video raths with GPS and I’d get feedback on my mobile, says Amit Shah", 2014

Strong , Help

“Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 2, “Cyclops”, Chapter 3, “Eugene” (p. 114)

“A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,
A careless shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"Delight in Disorder".
Hesperides (1648)

Art , Parting

“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

“Arms, hands [of the two van Gogh brothers, Vincent and Theo], like rifles, thrust out like non-stop ideas thoughts. Enormous thick veins like the ropes of a ship through which flow thoughts and inspirational excitement. They join the two brothers like nerve connections that pass from one body to the other, channeling the waves and opening up both in a magnetic ring of work and passion.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

quote, c. 1955; as quoted in: Zadkine and Van Gogh, ed. Garance Schabert and Ron Dirven (transl. Anne Porcelijn), Vincent van Goghhuis, Zundert & Scriptum Art, Schiedam 2008, p. 64
1940 - 1960

Idea , Passion

“Your entire universe will not be enough to make me guilty. You are the king of the Gods, Jupiter, the king of the stones and of the stars, the king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of men.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes, Act 3
The Flies (1943)

Men , God , Star , Universe

“The labeling of products of the Jewish state by the European Union brings back dark memories. Europe should be ashamed of itself. It took an immoral decision. Of the hundreds of territorial conflicts around the world, it chose to single out Israel and Israel alone, while it's fighting with its back against the wall against the wave of terror.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

As quoted in "EU: Products from West Bank and Golan cannot be labeled 'from Israel'" http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/11/europe/eu-labeling-israel-territories/ (11 November 2015), by Don Melvin and Oren Liebermann, CNN, State of Georgia: Cable News Network.
2010s, 2015

World , Decision , Memory , Fight

“[T]he last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view, that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting, imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it is roots in the body as a whole and also in the extended environment where the organism finds itself.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Varela (1998) " The Cosmos Letter http://www.expo-cosmos.or.jp/letter/letter12e.html", Expo'90 Foundation, Japan

World , Imagination , Nature , Sense

“Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Arachne" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 34.
The Complete Poems

Death , Birth , Sea

“Now was it night, when in deepe rest enrol'd
Are waves and windes, and mute the world doth show
Weari'd the beasts, and those that bottome hold
Of billow'd sea, and of moyst streames that flow,
And who are lodged in cave, or pen'd in fold,
And painted flyers in oblivion low,
Under their secret horrours silenced,
Stilled their cares, and their harts suppelled.”

Richard Carew (antiquary) (1555–1620) English scholar

Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Hierusalem (1594), Canto II, stanza 96

Secret , World , Silence , Painting

“I work in waves because I'm impatient. It has to be done. I take liberties.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Quote, as cited by Serota N. in the interview 'Cy Twombly: History behind the Thought' , Exhitbition catalogue: Cycles & Seasons, Tate Modern, London 2008
2000 - 2011

“The general notion in communication theory is that of information. In many cases, the flow of information corresponds to a flow of energy, e. g. if light waves emitted by some objects reach the eye or a photoelectric cell, elicit some reaction of the organism or some machinery, and thus convey information.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 41

Communication , Light

““One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.” Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!””

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 279).

Children , People , Pleasure , Law

“"I know you," he said. "I know your scent. Long ago, yes, but I never forget. I know your name."
"A friend of a friend, perhaps?" I eyed his spear-tip nervously. Unlike Eagle-beak, he didn't wave it about at all.
"No… an enemy…"
"Terrible when you can't remember something that's right on the tip of your tongue," I observed. "Isn't it, though? And you try so hard to recall it, but often as not you can't because some fool's interrupting you, prattling away so you can't concentrate, and-"
Bull-head gave a bellow of rage. "Shut up! I almost had it then!"”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Fools , Rage , Forgetting

“A wave do ye displace,
A shield do ye extend
To the travelling woe,
And violent exertion through grief.
And inflaming through fury
Between heaven and earth.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), Oh God, the God of Formation

Travel

“Wind is a flowing wave of air, moving hither and thither indefinitely. It is produced when heat meets moisture, the rush of heat generating a mighty current of air. That this is the fact we may learn from bronze eolipiles, and thus by means of a scientific invention discover a divine truth lurking in the laws of the heavens. Eolipiles are hollow bronze balls, with a very small opening through which water is poured into them. Set before a fire, not a breath issues from them before they get warm; but as soon as they begin to boil, out comes a strong blast due to the fire. Thus from this slight and very short experiment we may understand and judge of the mighty and wonderful laws of the heavens and the nature of winds.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 2

Truth , Law , Understanding , Nature

“Her face was all too bright for tears, she gave
Sighs to the wind, and weeping to the wave,
And left a lesson unto after-times,
Too little dwelt upon in minstrel rhymes,
A lesson how inconstancy should be
Repaid again by like inconstancy.”

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

(1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Ariadne
The Monthly Magazine

Tear , Time

“We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.”

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

The Song of the Dead http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/songdead.html, II, Stanza 1 (1896).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Sea , Dead

“I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors,
Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms,
Like actors in ancient plays.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques,
Illuminant de longs figements violets,
Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques.
St. 9
Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

“I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which welove against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up someting and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and we lost our minds.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Epilogue - Cannon Beach
The Lonely Dead (2004)

World , Understanding , Tree , Change

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

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

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

Beauty , Nature , Perfection , Sea

“Come o'er the moonlit sea,
The waves are brightly glowing.”

Charles Jefferys (1807–1865) British music publisher

The Moonlit Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Sea

“He might take habit, whether from wave or phrase,

Or power of the wave, or deepened speech,
Or a leaner being, moving in on him,
Of greater aptitude and apprehension,

As if the waves at last were never broken,
As if the language suddenly, with ease,
Said things it had laboriously spoken.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract

“Pure and undimmed, thy angel smile
Is mirrored on my dreams,
Like evening's sunset-girded isle
Upon her shadowed streams:
And o'er my thoughts thy vision floats,
Like melody of spring-bird, notes;
When the blue halcyon gently laves
His plumage in the flashing waves.”

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

To a young girl.

Smile , Dreams , Angels , Spring

“The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, st. 2 (1858).

Death , Sleep , Tree

“The imagination of these conquered peoples was dazzled by the introduction of Greek art, literature, philosophy, and public works. Though the successors of Alexander were unable to maintain the political control of the lands he conquered, and though successive waves of Roman, Arabian, and Tartar conquests swept over these lands in succeeding centuries, none of the later conquerors has been able wholly to eradicate the influence of Greek culture, nor to exterminate that element of population which was of Greek blood.”

Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (1856–1946) American diplomat

I was sent to Athens http://www.hri.org/docs/Morgenthau/

People , Art , Imagination , Literature

“Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Stanza 3
Ye Mariners of England http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Campbell/ye%20mariners_of_england.htm (1800)

Home , Mountain

“Your brains have been rewired to process all this Net-based information. Your brains are dealing with the world in a different way than humans ever have. That kind of profound shift has occurred only six times in the entire 200,000-year history of Homo Sapiens. And you, here today, are the vanguard of the seventh wave”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Discussing the seven waves (the invention of speech, the written word, the printing press, newspapers, radio, television, and Internet)
Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

World , Way , History , Time

“Ikenobo Sen'o, a master of flower arranging, once said (the remark is to be found in his Sayings): "With a spray of flowers, a bit of water, one evokes the vastness of rivers and mountains." The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, and this is because the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. Nothing is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail, than the Japanese art of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of stones gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs.”

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

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Art , Mountain , Flowers , Nature

“I know I'm going to Hell. And I think I might see a few of you there. When I get there, it'll be like (waving) "Hi", "Hi", "Oh my God…. Hi!"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Straight To Hell (2007)

God , Hell , Thinking

“Had another dream about the lions at the door
They were not half as frightening as they were before
But I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind'a ecstasy's got a hold on me
Walls, windows, trees, waves coming through
You be in me I'll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind'a ecstasy's got a hold on me
Up among the firs where it smells so sweet
Or down in the valley were the river used to be
I got my mind on eternity
Some kind'a ecstasy's got a hold on me, and I'm
Wondering where the lions are and I'm
Wondering where the lions are…”

Bruce Cockburn (1945) Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter

Wondering Where the Lions Are, Track 6 (See also:Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park)
Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws (1979)

Dreams , Thinking , Tree

“What happened was that Nigerians decided that they would like to put a final solution to Igbo problem. They unleashed a massacre. We tried to contain them; they unleashed a second wave more vicious than the previous one. I looked upon the situation, did the best I could for our people who were scattered all over Nigeria. I said okay, this is our boundary. If you can find your way back to within this area, whatever there is within this area would be shared amongst all of us. You have as much right here as anybody who happened to be here. That actually is another way of seeing the declaration of Biafra and they had a goal and aim in their flight. The other thing to bear in mind is that we didn’t really wage a war. What we did was resist Gowon’s coup d’état and I hope that he would enter the Guinness Book of Records as the person who has waged a coup longer than any body else because the whole three years, he was actually trying to legitimize his coup.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

War , People , Books , Hope

“Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave,
But carries no cry of what is hoped to be.
There may be little or much beyond the grave,
But the strong are saying nothing until they see.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"The Strong Are Saying Nothing
1930s

Hope , Strong , Cry

“Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been created so swiftly and successfully. No other nation has been built upon an idea – the idea of liberty. No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture. Both the founding fathers of the United States and successive waves of immigrants to your country were determined to create a new identity. Whether in flight from persecution or from poverty, the huddled masses have, with few exceptions, welcomed American values, the American way of life and American opportunities. And America herself has bound them to her with powerful bonds of patriotism and pride. The European nations are not and can never be like this. They are the product of history and not of philosophy. You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch (8 March 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108264
This quote appears to be the basis for the following condensed version, seen on numerous internet sites : Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Life , People , Way , History

“I am not old, — I cannot be old,
Though threescore years and ten
Have wasted away, like a tale that is told,
The lives of other men:

I am not old ; though friends and foes
Alike have gone to their graves,
And left me alone to my joys or my woes,
As a rock in the midst of the waves.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)

Men , Joy

“They [the previous chiefs of old] looked after the island, the fish, the turtles. They watched and did things that were good for the people…I have been to Hawaii, to Saipan, to Guam, to Tahiti, to Los Angeles. Don't they see that soon, very soon, change will crash on this island like a wave? […] I am afraid of what's happening to my island. […] I think money will break this island. Now on Woleai, Lamotrek, Pulusuk, and Puluwat, too, people fish in their motorboats and ask for money when they divide the catch. This was never our custom. In our custom everybody eats, not just those with money.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

The Last Navigator (1987)

Money , People , Angels , Thinking

“Spread along the platform was a mass of bobbing black hair like a long wave of silk. Suddenly I felt the first stirrings of what I would later come to recognize as kinship, a feeling that alarmed me, a sense that I was of a piece with a group of people for the most basic reasons, simple to the senses and irrational. They all looked like me.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

People , Feeling , Sense

“The result will be points of quiescence—technically known as nodes—where the air's density varies not at all, and no sound is heard. Note the paradox here: either sphere alone creates a sound wave at this point; two spheres together add up to no sound there at all. Two sources can add up to give less than one. This is the essence of destructive interference. (When two sources are giving the same instruction, the resulting vibration bears not twice but four times the energy. This phenomenon, oxymoronically known as constructive interference, may seem puzzling.)”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.12 Light as Waves

Time

“If we're going to consider failure to comply with UN directives a good reason for wrecking a country with cruise missiles, hey, I can think of a country in the Middle East which is in violation of a lot more UN directives than Iraq is. Israel has consistently thumbed its nose at UN directives, and no one in Washington has ever told Israel, "Comply or get hit." Let's understand one fundamental fact. This crusade against Iraq isn't about the United Nations or international security or stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It's about making the Middle East safe for Israel to continue bullying its neighbors and stealing from them. Every other explanation is lies and hypocrisy. And we really can expect a bigger dose of lies and hypocrisy than usual as the warmongers work to get this war against Iraq started. The media bosses will trot more generals and politicians in front of the TV cameras and have them bluster patriotically about how we're not going to let Saddam Hussein get away with it any longer, by god, and they'll show groups of military personnel cheering when they're told that they're being shipped out to the Persian Gulf to kick Saddam Hussein's behind and keep him from getting away with whatever it is he's getting away with, which mainly seems to be running his country the way he wants to instead of the way the United Nations tells him. They will work overtime at convincing the couch potatoes and the mindless yahoos who like to wave flags and shout patriotic slogans that destroying Iraq really is an act of American patriotism. And as long as the number of Americans killed in a Jewish war against Iraq remains small, the flag-waving yahoos and the bought politicians ought to be able to drown out any dissent from Americans like me who believe that we don't have any reasonable justification for waging such a war. And keeping casualties small ought to be easy, so long as it remains strictly a high-tech war, with us launching missiles against defenseless targets from many miles away. Of course, sometimes wars get out of hand, and unexpected things happen. If the Jews manage to get Iran involved in the war also -- and that's what they really want to do, what they really need to do -- then I think we stand a pretty good chance of seeing some major terrorist activity in the United States. I know that if I were Osama bin Laden, I'd have been spending my time getting ready for just such a development ever since Bill Clinton blew up that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. I'd be putting my teams into place in the United States, assembling materials, choosing targets, and waiting for the Jews to provide justification for me to begin killing Americans on a significant scale. Of course, whether Osama bin Laden is as resourceful and as capable as he's said to be remains to be seen. Personally, I have very little faith in the ability of these flea-bitten Muslims to get things done. But we'll see.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts.
1990s, 1990

God , War , Faith , Way

“The waves round the horn will toss us to and fro, to and fro like a rubber duckie in the bathtub of an angry God.”

Arthur M. Jolly (1969) American writer

Captain Ahab
Moby (No Last Name Given) (2014)

God

“Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds the torn hair round their paleness.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum" in Modern British Poetry (1962) edited by Louis Untermeyer (1962) variant : Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Children