Ferryman Quotes

Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them.

It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had spent twenty years of his human existence learning to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.

It was one of the ferryman’s greatest virtues that, like few people, he knew how to listen.

..How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I'd no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross.

There is power in a name. It is through names that we bring all things into this world, and when they leave, it is names we carry with us, so they are never truly gone.

I have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been nothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek money and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly across that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four or five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to them, as it has become sacred to me.

I try to be the best ferryman I can be because I know people are counting on me. I think that’s all anyone can ask for. I’ve learned from my mistakes, even as I continue to make new ones.

The problem with Fate is that no matter how many times you call out to her, she has her own timing that’s irrelevant to whatever anyone else happens to be doing

It is within this space that revelations come, and mine is this: there’s only one thing I can do to help my father now, something I have never done before. I kiss him on the forehead. “I love you,” I tell him.

We get sombre about death. Think about Charon the ferryman rowing the souls across the Styx to the Isle of the Dead. Pretty grim stuff. Unless you think that, perhaps, at times, old Charon rows souls back to the land of the living too. Perhaps I have merely gone to rest awhile…

She fed him scraps from her ragbag because words were all that were left now. Perhaps he could use them to pay the ferryman. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Full fathom five thy father lies. Little lamb, who made thee? Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie. On that best portion of a good man's life, his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love. Farther and farther, all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The air rippled and shimmered. Time narrowed to a pinpoint. It was about to happen. Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Nevertheless, I stabbed him.

Death is permanent. There’s no coming back if you get off the ferryman’s boat.

Kit: Gone on where? Is he in Heaven? I mean, it seems so unlikely. Jessamine: Christopher! Kit: Seriously, You didn't know him. Jessamine: I don't know what comes after death. Tessa used to come and ask me too. She wanted to know where Will was. But he didn't linger - he died happy and at peace, and he went on. I am not like Charon. I am no ferryman. I cannot say what lies on the other side of the river. Kit: It could be awful. It could be torture forever. Jessamine: It could be. But I don't think so.

All I want is this, this and nothing else. Ever.

The law does not require that to be proved which is apparent to the court.’ 

The mind works wondrously; it is capable of astonishing feats. It is the only machine in nature capable of thinking one thing while knowing its opposite.

She did not recall the words, only the idea: that loss was love’s accounting, its unit of measure, as a foot was made of inches, a yard was made of feet.

I swear by the mass I believe Hugh Ferryman took you for a maid.

How did my friends cross the cobalt river, with what did they pay the ferryman? As they set out for the indigo shore under this jet-black sky - some died on their feet with a backward glance.

and the thought came to me then that who we are to one another isn’t so easy to categorize after all: that fathers can be sons, and lovers friends, and daughters mothers, and that such words as these tell only half the story, maybe not even half.

Eurydice Speaks” How will I know you in the underworld? How will we find each other? We lived for so long on the physical earth— Our skies littered with actual stars Practical tides in our bay— What will we do with the loneliness of the mythical? Walking beside ditches brimming with dactyls, By a ferryman whose feet are scanned for him On the shore of a river written and rewritten As elegy, epic, epode. Remember the thin air of our earthly winters? Frost was an iron, underhand descent. Dusk was always in session And no one needed to write down Or restate, or make record of, or ever would, And never will, The plainspoken music of recognition, Nor the way I often stood at the window— The hills growing dark, saying, As a shadow became a stride And a raincoat was woven out of streetlight I would know you anywhere.

Vasudeva listened with great attention. Listening carefully, he let everything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning, all that searching, all joy, all distress. This was among the ferryman's virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how to listen. Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how Vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he did not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience, did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening. Siddhartha felt, what a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to burry in his heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering.

I have a choice. That’s why I’m still here.

Yet something nagged at me. It is impossible, of course, to completely know another person; we are, in the end, prisoners of our own minds.

Why do certain arbitrary images stay with us, branded upon the walls of memory, while others sink forever into time’s abyss?

I will give you childhood, so that you might know innocence. Age, so you will know the prize of youth. Children, so that you will care for the future. Toil, so that you will know the value of a day. The body’s failings, so that you will know its worth. Death, so that you will cherish the bittersweet beauty of life.

War, pestilence, famine, environmental collapse; vast migrations and fanaticism of every stripe; a world de-civilized as the earth’s peoples, sworn to competing gods, turned upon one another:

/A weekend toward the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts. I’ll go if you want me to, he said. I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him. You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said. He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later. It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips traveled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.

collapses in a cascade of confusion.

You know a lot of things. You believe almost nothing.

It is the most beautiful star in the history of stars, which is the history of everything.

He sat on the hillside and waited.

Time marches on while mothers weep, each one wondering why the world hasn't stopped to mourn.

I try to remember the shepherd-ferryman, to eat cheese between meals, and to do my best to become rather than to obsessively seek and control.

I’m doing the best I can. Getting old, that’s what it is. I’ll be fifty-three at the feast of Saint Michael. I’m no longer as strong as you are, young sirs,’ said the ferryman.

Hugo was important. Not because he was a ferryman, but because he was Hugo.

This was among the ferryman’s virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how to listen.

The man who wasn’t God, but something she’d called a ferryman.

This was one of the greatest among the ferryman’s virtues: He had mastered the art of listening.

One of the ferryman’s greatest virtues was that he knew how to listen like few other people.

Smiling, Siddhartha felt happiness at the friendship and friendliness of the ferryman. He is like Govinda, he thought, smiling. All the people I meet upon my way are like Govinda. All of them are grateful, though they themselves have cause to expect gratitude. All of them are deferential, all are eager to be a friend, to obey and think little. People are children.

Do you know Charon?” “No.” “He was the Greek ferryman who carried souls to Hades over the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world between the living and the dead.” Hugo chuckled.

Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the

These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them.

Pile up that gold around my head. I must take it with me to pay the ferryman.’ ‘I thought it was just a coin on the eyes or something.’ ‘Inflation. Also, I’ll take up rather a lot of room on the boat.

Continue to fill the underworld, and the ferryman's pockets, and don't even bother trying to wash away the blood of thousands that already stains your hands. Meanwhile, I'll be over here, growing old in comfort, warmed by my home's hearth and my lover's gentle arms. So, carry on, dear. And when the ships' shadows creep over the horizon, when the chariots thunder across the sand and fire rains down from the sky, ask yourself, which would be the better way to die?

And right there you have it. That’s the principle behind consciousness integration. A world without a living intelligence behind it—a soul, in other words—isn’t actually a world at all. It’s merely a place. The result is the emptiness and despair experienced by our test subjects. Austen’s novel feels alive because it is alive, just as the world that you and I profess to live in is alive. It’s made by a mind, not a machine, and that mind is what gives it the sense of deep order and purpose. You may not see it, but you can sense its presence, and that’s what makes life not merely endurable but also worth living.

Diana: Do not let the ghosts of the past steal the joy from the future. Thank you for holding my hand. You can let go now. Your father, in blood and vow, Philippe P.S. The coin is for the ferryman. Tell Matthew I will see you safe on the other side.

You will learn it,” spoke Vasudeva, “but not from me. The river has taught me to listen, from it you will learn it as well. The river knows everything, everything can be learned from it. See, you’ve already learned this from the water too, that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek depth. The rich and elegant Siddhartha is becoming an oarsman’s servant, the learned Brahmin Siddhartha becomes a ferryman: this has also been told to you by the river. You’ll learn that other thing from it as well.” Siddhartha

The Ferryman will transport us across the moat,” Chris informed. “Yeah. This seems legit,” Gabriella quipped as Chris helped her onto the boat. Andrew followed behind. “Are you sure this isn’t a trick?” Egnatious asked. Again, uncertainty filtered into Chris’s blue eyes, but he nodded anyway. “This is the only way.

If I could talk and teach, I might be a sage, but I am only a ferryman, and my task is to ferry people across this river. I have ferried many across, thousands, and for all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance in their travels. They traveled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages, and the river was in their way, and the ferryman was there to get them swiftly across that hindrance. But for a few among the thousands, a very few, four or five, the river was no hindrance, They heard its voice, they listened to it, and the river became sacred for them, as it is for me. Let us now retire for the night, Siddhartha.

It takes a woman to get a job done right. Some men can't even die properly without the help of a woman.

Which only goes to show that people are more complicated than they let on, and that even tragedy (sometimes only tragedy) can open the door to who we really are.

the true essence of loving a child: a joy so intense that it can feel like sadness.

that it was and always would be impossible to know what was dream and what was not; that all creation was boxes within boxes within boxes, each the dream of a different god.

Fortune frowns as often as he smiles, and you don’t want to be in his line of sight when he does.

Do you believe that evil and tragedy are always planned? You don’t think Fortune has anything to do with it?

We look no deeper into things because we do not desire this; neither are we meant to. That is the design of the world, to trick us into believing it is one thing, when it’s entirely another.

Funny weather today,’ said the ferryman, bending slowly to his oars. ‘In the morning you wake up to such a mist that you can’t see two fathoms distance. And then about ten o’clock out comes the sun. One says to oneself “Here’s spring on the way”. And no sooner said than hailstorms set in for the afternoon. And now the wind’s getting up, and there’s going to be quite a blow, that’s certain. Funny weather.

I sware unto you my furtherance if I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet, since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since this virtue it hath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss, give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me." ... So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld how earth gaped for Zeldornius.

The mind works wondrously; it is capable of astonishing feats. It is the only machine in nature capable of thinking one thing while knowing its opposite. The bright, busy surface of life—that is the key. How easily it distracts us, like a magician who waves a wand with one hand while, with the other, he plucks a rabbit from his vest. Here is the golden morning, we say; here is the beautiful sea. Here is my beautiful home, my adoring wife, my morning cup of coffee, and my refreshing daybreak swim. We look no deeper into things because we do not desire this; neither are we meant to. That is the design of the world, to trick us into believing it is one thing, when it’s entirely another. I ask again: Did I know? Of course I did. Of course I fucking knew.

I didn't like the looks of those other grave robbers. You were the first women who's noticed me in years and I thought you were beautiful." "Are you flirting?" "If I were alive, perhaps," he replied, "but as it is, I don't think we could be more than friends.

The funny thing is, and speaking in hindsight, I had come to feel a certain fondness for the man. He was infuriating, yes, but his amiable manner made it impossible to dislike him. One rarely meets a person of such geniality, and I genuinely wished him no further ill. Nevertheless, I stabbed him.

In one end of the boat crouched a little girl, the ferryman's daughter, and she sobbed continually, so that the sound of the child's grief finally attracted Zixi's attention. "Why do you sob?" questioned the queen. "Because I want to be a man," replied the child, trying to stifle her sobs. "Why do you want to be a man?" asked Zixi curiously. "Because I'm a little girl," was the reply. This made Zixi angry. "You're a little fool!" she exclaimed loudly. "There are other fools in the world," said the child, and renewed her sobs. Zixi did not reply, but she thought to herself, "We are all alike - the alligator, the owl, the girl, and the powerful Queen of Ix.

In the fall then he changed his leathers and gaiters for a decent suit of black and his crook for a walking-stick, and though he had never decided on it in so many words, he and the dog Spark (a good sheepdog whom Auberon could have sold with the flock but couldn’t part with) set out along the Harlem River till they came to a place where they could cross (near 137th Street). The aged, aged ferryman had a beautiful great-grandaughter brown as a berry and a gray, flat, knocking, groaning boat; Auberon stood up in the bows as the ferry drifted along its line downstream to a mooring on the opposite side. He paid, the dog Spark leapt out before him, and he stepped off into the Wild Wood without looking back. It was late afternoon; the sun

Where are you taking me?” Andrew demanded, whirling on the Ferryman. His muscles tensed, hands curling in and out of fists. “To my master.” The voice was ghostly, whispers of black ash and death, words cold and detached. He had an idea who that was but asked anyway: “And who is your master?” No answer came. Andrew’s insatiable rage rose up and swallowed his grief like a yawning ocean mouth, the darkest depths surging to the surface to form a mighty tidal wave. He closed the distance and seized the Ferryman’s gaunt wrist. There was no substance, no life beneath the cloak. The Ferryman slowly turned his hooded head, and Andrew found himself looking into the black hole of a self-contained night. The olfactory of decay was a punch in the face. Andrew released the Ferryman’s wrist and hastily stepped back, rocking the boat as he put distance between him and the unnatural wind spilling from the gaping orifice. Andrew shivered, the tiny hairs on his neck saluting. The cloaked head faced forward again, and the wind died away.

Proctor realized what he’s seeing: a memory in the making, of the night when her father handed her the tiller and put her in charge. The though delights him, though not without an underlying twinge of melancholy: his little girl is growing up so fast. The day will come when she’ll leave him, leave both of them, behind; friends, boys, new experiences, all will take the stage until, one day, he’ll look up to find her gone, off with a family of her own. But isn’t that also something to look forward to? To watch his daughter, whom, not so long ago, he held in the palm of a single hand, step into the flow of life? It’s all very complex, and it seems to him that within this complexity lies the true essence of loving a child: a joy so intense that it can feel like sadness.

There can be a sadness when you move from one state to another, as we often find comfort in what we know best and what we have become accustomed to. Transition can bring with it fear, as well as a desire to look to another for aid, just as the child looks to the ferryman. The Six of Swords, being in the suit of the mind, on a higher level represents the journeys of the mind and the transition to new ideas and ways of thinking; on a lower level, it relates to any transition we undergo that involves leaving something behind. We can imagine that the woman and child in the boat are being ferried to a new life, away from something in the past that may have hurt or threatened them. The ferryman may be the father of the child, or he may be a stranger they have hired for help in getting across the river. We can see that, whilst they do not have all of their possessions with them on this journey to a new life, they have retained a few chests that contain some belongings. When we move to a new state of mind or being, or undergo a spiritual transition or a physical move, we never truly leave the past behind; the trick is being able to differentiate between good baggage and bad baggage. Sometimes we can use the past, and all we have learned and gained from it, to propel us forward in momentum across the river to the other side. Sometimes we cling only to the baggage from the past that weighs us down, and in that case the weight may be too heavy for the boat and start to sink it. It is, ultimately, our choice as to what we pack in the chests that we take with us on the journey.

Mirrors are considered portals. It was originally a Roman custom. Reflective water also had to be covered in the ancient world after death as well as coins put on the eyelids for payment to the ferryman, Charon. Southern people still cover mirrors as well as Jews who do it out of respect for the dead. Some Europeans put coins on the eyes to this day,” I replied.

A large lantern appeared in one of Charun's hands. It glowed, illuminating him, me, and the immediate area. I saw him all the better for it, a tall rangy man, dressed in black jeans and a black and red plaid western shirt. He also wore snakeskin cowboy boots. Never had I imagined Charun, the Ferryman of the River Styx, dressed like that. He should be riding off into the sunset; not ferrying souls to the Elysian Fields.

Awake in peace, you of back-turned face, in peace, You who looks backward, in peace, Sky's ferryman, in peace, Nut's ferryman, in peace, Ferryman of gods, in peacel! Unas has come to you That you may ferry him in this boat in which you ferry the gods. Unas has come to his side as a god comes to his side, Unas has come to his shore as a god comes to his shore. No one alive accuses Unas, No dead accuses Unas; No goose accuses Unas, No ox accuses Unas If you fail to ferry Unas, He will leap and sit on the wing of Thoth.s Then he will ferry Unas to that side Utterance 270 Antechamber, South Wall The king summons the ferryman

Awake in peace, you of back-turned face, in peace, You who looks backward, in peace... Unas has come to you That you may ferry him in this boat in which you ferry the gods. Unas has come to his side as a god comes to his side, IInas has come to his shore as a god comes to his shore Utterance 270 Antechamber, South Wall The king summons the ferryman

Far below, the purple mist parted and an ornate tram rose out of the fug. It was a work of art, as exquisite as anything Nita might have found in her own land. Looping gold-plated filigree covered the outside. The brass-work was polished to a glorious sheen, and the wood was flawless ebony. “It’s… magnificent.” “What did you expect?” “Well, from the way you’ve described them, I expected a ferryman guiding something from the gates of hell.” “Mmm. And who’s to say this ain’t what that looks like?” The

The Calling by Stewart Stafford Lightning-scorched gravestones, Leave and follow infinity’s call, Spring off the edge of Flat Earth, Know not what lies there and fall. Silence licks and speaks in tongues, Darkness the ferryman leading on, Fingers caress, scraping skin curses, Talisman whispers the way is gone. Hit the bottom and scream out for air, Fill the lungs with each noxious gas, Decide to rest some in poisoned sleep, Nourish yourself in an extended fast. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

rictus

fugue

pay the ferryman to carry Augustus’ spirit across the river Styx to the underworld.

Grumbling and limping, she reached the door and opened it, saying, “It wasn’t locked for a reason.” Steve Ferryman stared at her. “You cut your hair.” Meg huffed. “Yes, it looks like puppy fuzz. No, you can’t pet it.” He worked hard not to smile.

Ferryman slid his hand to his own waist, where I strongly suspected he had a gun of his own tucked away. The whole thing would turn into a replica of Riot Night in seconds if we didn't do something to diffuse the situation... or at least get it away from all the innocent bystanders.

I’d never had a son and never would, or a younger brother to teach the ways of life, as Malcolm had taught me; and the thought came to me then that who we are to one another isn’t so easy to categorize after all: that fathers can be sons, and lovers friends, and daughters mothers, and that such words as these tell only half the story, maybe not even half.

Her demeanor can come across as rather crusty and disapproving,

The mind works wondrously; it is capable of astonishing feats. It is the only machine in nature capable of thinking one thing while knowing its opposite. The bright, busy surface of life—that is the key.

even tragedy (sometimes only tragedy) can open the door to who we really are.

will live whole lives within this dream world, completely unaware of its falsity. Memory-suppression drugs, administered prior to their integration, will eliminate any recollection of their waking lives. In this state, the sleepers will be born, live out their days, and be born again, over and over, for the duration of

He looked her straight in the eye as he spoke. Dylan was desperate to look away, but she was hypnotized. “I will not lose you,” he repeated. “Trust me.

ferryman,

All that had happened to me since I’d awakened suddenly bifurcated in my mind, as if these things had happened to two different

The name Caeli comes from the Latin caelus, meaning ‘from the heavens.’ It seemed appropriate.

First, the mind needs to dream. Dreams are absolutely crucial to healthy mental function. They’re a kind of workshop for the mind, helping us sort and store memories, make important connections, and process the emotional data of our lives.

The world is not the world. You’re not you.

Arrival come,” he says. “Arrival come.

Pappi’s paintings have no subjects. The word Thea would choose is “presence”—a subterranean stratum just visible below the surface of the work. Faces in the water. Faces in the clouds. Faces in the walls of buildings. A thread of faces, woven through the fabric of the world.

It felt almost as if death were reaching out from the great beyond to claim him, as if the warmth of the living world around him were fading. Was this what it was like when the ferryman carried you across the great river? He

Oranios, Oranios, all Oranios…

It was just a stupid mistake.” Her voice was distant, airy. It was as if she’d gone away, into some abstract realm. “If she’d thought for even a second how it would make you feel, she never would have done it.” I was stunned.

Upon setting foot on land, the ferryman warned me I would not have a ride back. The ferryman seemed spooked by the fog. ‘Cursed lands! Cursed lands! Cletus yelled.’ I came to the realization something was wrong with Cletus when I noticed the curvature of the man’s bones. I could not understand what had transpired, for the very air seemed cool. So I shrugged it off and continued my journey past the fog.

I think we just figured out the cost of my life,” Darius growled in agreement. “The Ferryman wants paying back in death.

ferryman’s hefty Africans pace short reciprocating arcs on the deck, sweeping and shoveling the black water of the Charles Basin with long stanchion-mounted oars, minting systems of vortices that fall to aft, flailing about one another, tracing out fading and flattening conic sections that Sir Isaac could probably work out in his head. The Hypothesis of Vortices is pressed with many difficulties. The sky’s a matted reticule of taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks. Gusts make the anchored ships start and jostle like nervous horses hearing distant guns.