Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Charles Dickens

The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm.

Charles Dickens

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from, or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable or more cruel.

Charles Caleb Colton

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

Charles Caleb Colton

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Charles Caleb Colton

Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

Charles Caleb Colton

Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Charles Stross

All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.

Charles Caleb Colton

Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality, only in one. But truth, like that reality of which the perspective is the representation, will bear to be scrutinized in all points of view, and though examined under every situation, is one and the same.

Alan Watts

Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.

Alan Watts

The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Alan Watts

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

Alan Watts

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Alan Watts

Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality...

Alan Watts

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag , whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people , and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

Alan Watts

Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.

Alan Watts

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality.

Charles Sturt

Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.

Dave Foley

I never watched 'Harper's Island.'

Dave Barry

You might have mentioned this to me Molly,” said Leonard. “The fact that there are hostile natives on the island.” “I forgot,” said Molly. “You forgot?” said Leonard. “There’s been a lot happening,” said Molly.

Dave Barry

Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.

David Quammen

Islands are where species go to die.

Benicio Del Toro

You have to kill to survive. People have been doing it forever. I eat meat, and I eat fish. If I were on a deserted island I would need that to survive.

Denis Waitley

Most people spend their entire lives on a fantasy island called 'Someday I'll.'

Elizabeth Pena

When I'm not working, my family and I have a house in the San Juan Islands. We've been here since '94.

Carolyn Murphy

I had dreamed of visiting Bali for many years and because I had an extended family of Balinese friends in Los Angeles, I felt connected. The island is so peaceful and the smiles are constant.