Good Fisherman Quotes

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He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.” “Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him. “Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?” “This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.” “No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?
Robin Hobb (Royal Assassin (Farseer Trilogy, #2))
I found out I was in love with you, winter before last," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you'd felt anything like that for me, you'd have known I did. But it wasn't both of us. So there was no good in it. But then, when you told us you're leaving ... At first I thought, all the more reason to say nothing. But then I thought, that wouldn't be fair. To me, partly. Love has a right to be spoken. And you have a right to know that somebody loves you. That somebody has loved you, could love you. We all need to know that. [...]
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Fisherman of the Inland Sea)
Full moon is a good fisherman; every eyes are easily caught in his net!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, She’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts ‘em inna pens Wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock One flew east, one flew west One flew over the cuckoo’s nest O-U-T- spells out… goose swoops down and plucks you out.
Ken Kesey
the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if they had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought --to call it by a prouder name than it deserved-- had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until --you know the little tug -- the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
Qué va," the boy said. "There are many good fisherman and some great ones. But there is only you.
Ernest Hemingway
the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.
George MacDonald (The Fisherman's Lady (Malcolm, #1))
Sea and fisherman are not good friends because fisherman takes the good treasures of the sea without giving something good in return!
Mehmet Murat ildan
What you must remember is that the magic itself is neither good nor bad, no more so than this ship might be used for right or wrong. It might be used by a fisherman to feed a village, for example. Or, the same vessel might be sailed by pirates to murder and pillage...the lumber, rope, nails, cotton, and everything that goes into it-is created by the True One. Humans decide how it is to be put together and how it is used.
Derek Donais (MetalMagic: Talisman)
Conversation between Siddhartha, who has temporarily given up all worldly possessions in order to experience total poverty first hand, talks to a merchant. That seems to be the way of things. Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that" (said Siddhartha) Ah, but if you are without possessions, how can you give?" Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instructions, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish." Very well and what can you give? What have you learned that you can give(the merchant asks of Siddhartha) I can think, I can wait, I can fast." Is that all?" I think that is all." And of what use are they? For example, fasting, what good is that?" It is of great value, sir. If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you, or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven him. But, as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. He is not impatient, he is not in need, he can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. Therefore, fasting is useful, sir.
Siddhartha
Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to good or ill?" "If He did not, He could not be good himself..." "...Then He can't be so hard on us as the parsons say, even in the after-life?" "He will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring His children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether He achieve it here--or there.
George MacDonald (The Fisherman's Lady (Malcolm, #1))
I think love—the good kind—holds an equal mix of wonder and familiarity. That feeling like you know someone, yet you also know parts of them are still a mystery that you can’t wait to slowly discover. If there’s no wonder, I think the love can die. If there’s no familiarity, I think the love already feels dead. If I were the one marrying you, I would be bothered more than I am. But you chose her.
Jewel E. Ann (The Lost Fisherman (Fisherman, #2))
Why did he have to be such a good kisser? It was all his fault. Stupid fisherman. Stupid, sexy fisherman. Stupid, sexy, wonderful fisherman. Who was I kidding? Who do you blame when there is no sin? Wait… Was I a good kisser, too? I mean, he seemed just as drawn in as I was. Maybe I was! Imagine that.
Kiera Cass (The Siren)
Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
Tingle, ting-le, tang-le toes, she’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts ’em inna pens…wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock…one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest…O-U-T spells out…goose swoops down and plucks you out.
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
People love to watch viral videos in which one kindly fisherman saves one sea turtle from a snarl of trash; they are less passionate about electing politicians who will dismantle policies that entrench corporate power and allow companies to pump poison into the oceans and skies in order to shore up the immoral wealth of billionaires and further destabilize the lives of the poor who will remain locked in toil until the planet boils us all to death as Jeff Bezos waves good-bye from his private rocket. Strange!
Lindy West (The Witches are Coming)
There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought – to call it by a prouder name than it deserved – had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until – you know the little tug – the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
Gray gives my arm a nudge. “Hey. Last one to Fisherman’s Wharf buys breakfast.” Little fucker. We both are good for quick bursts of speed. But Gray is better at longer distances. So I do what any self-respecting competitor would. I shove him into the grass and take off.
Kristen Callihan (The Game Plan (Game On, #3))
What! my lord," cried the fisherman, "and art thou then so unhappy, thou who bestowest favors?" "A hundred times more unhappy than thee," replied Zadig. "But how is it possible," said the good man, "that the giver can be more wretched than the receiver?" "Because," replied Zadig, "thy greatest misery arose from poverty, and mine is seated in the heart." "Did
Voltaire (Romances, Complete in One Volume)
Goodbye, good luck, struck the sun & the moon To the fisherman lost on the land He stands alone at the door of his home, With his long-legged heart in his hand.
Dylan Thomas
You make as good a fisherman as a goat’s arse makes a trumpet.
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5))
Each gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the businessman gives goods, the teacher gives teaching, the farmer gives rice, the fisherman gives fish.
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha (Wisehouse Classics Edition))
Salem" In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes until the knitting sailor stabs at ships nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft lashes the oily slick about your head, beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,-- There sewage sickens the rebellious seas. Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks. Where was it that New England bred the men who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks and fought the British Lion to his knees?
Robert Lowell
My dad started working as a commercial fisherman, and then he started building duck calls because he was convinced he could make a call sound more like a duck than anyone else in the world. He was right.
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick and red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf — nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco…
Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
And there it is. The threat I have lived with my entire life. If I am not good enough, kind enough, thoughtful enough, obedient enough, I will be cast from my home like a stunted fish from a fisherman's net.
Robin LaFevers (Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin, #3))
Good Lord, just think what poor old God must go through also,” he said with a laugh. “He certainly got himself in hot water when he created the world. The fish screams, Don’t blind me, Lord; don’t let me enter the nets! The fisherman screams, Blind the fish, Lord; make him enter the nets! Which one is God supposed to listen to? Sometimes he listens to the fish, sometimes to the fisherman—and that’s the way the world goes round!
Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ)
My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was af if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she said "fate" because she couldn't pronounce the "th" sound in "faith". And later I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I wasn't denying any possibility, good or bad. I was just saying, If there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, here's where the odds should be placed. I remember the day I started thinking this, it was such a revelation to me. It was the day my mother lost her faith in God. She found that things of unquestioned certainty could never be trusted again. We had gone to the beach, to a secluded spot south of the city near Devil's Slide. My father had read in Sunset magazine that this was a good place to catch ocean perch. And although my father was not a fisherman but a pharmacist's assistant who had once been a doctor in China, he believed in his nenkan, his ability to do anything he put his mind to. My mother believed she had nenkan to cook anything my father had a mind to catch. It was this belief in their nenkan that had brought my parents to America. It had enabled them to have seven children and buy a house in Sunset district with very little money. It had given them the confidence to believe their luck would never run out, that God was on their side, that house gods had only benevolent things to report and our ancestors were pleased, that lifetime warranties meant our lucky streak would never break, that all the elements were now in balance, the right amount of wind and water.
Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)
Dunno, Don't know how to spell it. I mean'- he made a picture frame with his hands- 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here see?
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
An old man, I want only peace. The things of this world mean nothing. I know no good way to live and I can’t stop getting lost in my thoughts, my ancient forests. The wind that waves the pines loosens my belt. The mountain moon lights me as I play my lute. You ask: how does a man rise or fall in this life? The fisherman’s song flows deep under the river.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable. It was too good to last. If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it ashore because they do not know what to look for. It is silly not to hope. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also, I have no understanding of it. … and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it. Let them think about it. You were born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish. .... You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more? Everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. “Don’t think, old man,” he said aloud. “Sail on this course and take it when it comes. But I must think, he thought. Because it is all I have left. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought. “Nothing,” he said aloud. “I went out too far.
Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the sea)
Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
The Heron Every morning at dawn the heron comes winging across the woods to rob my lake of its trout. It is not a very large lake, and there are not very many trout; soon there will be none at all if the heron continues to breakfast in this fashion. I would not grudge him a reasonable meal occasionally, but he is an indiscriminate and extravagant fisherman who pulls out trout too large for him to swallow and strews them mangled on the bank. The good fisherman, the honest angler, returns his smaller catch to the water; the heron acts contrariwise, failing to return those which are too big to be of any use to him. The other day he was seen struggling with one half way down his throat; and in spite of my liking for herons, especially when they frequent other people's lakes and streams, I confess I wish it had choked him.
Vita Sackville-West (Country Notes)
Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf—nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco. Add fog, hunger-making raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high-heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window . . .
Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
Forsake All I ask you to remember that the disciples were men who had forsaken all to follow Jesus. The Lord Jesus went to a fisherman and said, “Leave your net behind and follow Me.” To another man He said, “Leave your position as a tax collector and come and follow Me.” They did it. They left those things behind and followed Jesus. They could later say by the mouth of Peter, We have forsaken all and followed thee (Matthew 19:27). They left their homes, their families, and their good names. Men mocked and laughed at them. Men called them the disciples of Jesus, and when He was despised and hated, they were hated too. They identified themselves with Him and gave themselves up entirely to follow Him. This is the first step to being filled with the Holy Spirit. We must forsake all to follow Christ.
Andrew Murray (Absolute Surrender (Updated and Annotated): The Blessedness of Forsaking All and Following Christ)
A sensual lifestyle defies the productivist logic, it has time. I love this illustration by Anthony DeMello: A rich entrepreneur from the North was horrified to find the southern fisherman lying lazily besides his boat, smoking pipe. “Why aren’t you out fishing?” said the entrepreneur. “Because I have caught enough fish for the day,” said the fisherman. “Why don’t you catch some more?” “What would I do with them?” “You could earn more money,” was the entrepreneur’s reply. “With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you would have more money to own two boats... maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man like me.” “What would I do then?” asked the fisherman. “Then you could really enjoy life.” “What do you think I’m doing right now?
Lebo Grand
At noontime in midsummer, when the sun is at its highest and everything is in a state of embroiled repose, flashes may be seen in the southern sky. Into the radiance of daylight come bursts of light even more radiant. Exactly half a year later, when the fjord is frozen over and the land buried in snow, the very same spirit taunts creation. At night cracks in the ice race from one end of the fjord to the other, resounding like gunshots or like the roaring of a mad demon. The peasants dig tunnels from their door through the drifts over to the cow shed. Where are the trolls and the elves now, and where are the sounds of nature? Even the Beast may well be dead and forgotten. Life itself hangs in suspension - existence has shrunk to nothingness. Now it is only a question of survival. The fox thrashes around in a blizzard in the oak thicket and fights his way out, mortally terrified. It is a time of stillness. Hoarfrost lies in a timeless shroud over the fjord. All day long a strange, sighing sound is heard from out on the ice. It is a fisherman, standing alone at his hole and spearing eel. One night it snows again. The air is sheer snow and the wind a frigid blast. No living creature is stirring. Then a rider comes to the crossing at Hvalpsund. There is no difficulty in getting over­ - he does not even slacken his speed, but rides at a brisk trot from the shore out onto the ice. The hoofbeats thunder beneath him and the ice roars for miles around. He reaches the other side and rides up onto the land. The horse — a mighty steed not afraid to shake its shanks - cleaves the storm with neck outstretched. The blizzard blows the rider's ashen cape back and he sits naked, with his bare bones sticking out and the snow whistling about his ribs. It is Death that is out riding. His crown sits on three hairs and his scythe points triumphantly backward. Death has his whims. He takes it into his head to dis­mount when he sees a light in the winter night. He gives his horse a slap on the haunch and it leaps into the air and is gone. For the rest of the way Death walks like a carefree man, sauntering absentmindedly along. In the snow-streaked night a crow is sitting on a wayside branch. Its head is much too large for its body. Its beady eyes sparkle when it sees the wanderer's familiar face, and its cawing turns into silent laughter as it throws its beak wide open, with its spear-like tongue sticking far out. It seems almost ready to fall off the branch with its laughter, but it keeps on looking at Death with consuming merriment. Death moves on. Suddenly he finds himself beside a man. He raps the man on the back with his fingers and leaves him lying there. There is a light. Death keeps his eye on the light and walks toward it. He moves into the shaft of light and labors his way over a frozen field. But when he comes close enough to make out the house a strange fervor grips him. He has finally come home - yes, this has been his true home from the beginning. Thank goodness he has now found it again after so much difficulty. He goes in, and a solitary old couple make him welcome. They cannot know that he is anything more than a traveling tradesman, spent and sick. He lies down quickly on the bed without a word. They can see that he is really far gone. He lies on his back while they move about the room with the candle and chat. He forgets them. For a long time he lies there, quiet but awake. Finally there are a few low moans, faltering and tentative. He begins to cry, and then quickly stops. But now the moans continue, becoming louder, and then going over to tearless sobs. His body arches up, resting only on head and heels. He stares in anguish at the ceiling and screams, screams like a woman in labor. Finally he collapses, and his cries begin to subside. Little by little he falls silent and lies quiet.
Johannes V. Jensen (Kongens fald)
Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.
Anonymous
Can I tell the ladies you’ll be visiting?” Dixon looked back at the cart as if it were a dead body. “If you got some rope, I could clear that chimney for you.” “I could get some rope.” “Don’t buy it. Borrow some from Henry the Fisher at the south docks. He ain’t using it today. Tell him it’s for me. He’ll be…” He looked at her and chuckled. “How about I go get it.” “Whatever you think is best.” “Best not to send a woman who looks like you across town to a surly fisherman’s bar.” He stared at her a moment and shook his head. “What?” “You’re a beautiful woman, Gwen.” “Thank you, Dixon.” “What I meant is that no one should ever mistake you for a man.” “I don’t think anyone ever has.” “You keep acting this way and they might. For a second there I did.” “That’s not good news for a woman in my profession.” “How do you think it makes me feel? Just got a new job and discovered I’m blind all in the same day.” “Just so long as you’re not deaf and dumb.” “No promises. You get me as I am.” “I’ll take it.
Michael J. Sullivan (The Crown Tower (The Riyria Chronicles, #1))
The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.
Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
When Tommy asked me to speak to the students, I immediately told him no. I was finally comfortable talking to people individually about my faith, but I still didn’t want anything to do with public speaking. But then I thought about the idea for three or four days and it was really nagging at me. I called Tommy back and told him to line it up. When I arrived at the classroom a few days later, there were about fifty kids there. I stood in the front of the class and told them I was a hunter and fisherman, but I loved the Lord, and I told them why. I went through my entire testimony and shared the Gospel with them. I was so nervous talking to them that every time I tried to turn a page in my Bible, I ripped about three pages! My hand was shaking so badly that I couldn’t stop ripping pages! I kept looking up to see if anyone had noticed how nervous I was. I couldn’t wait for my talk to end. But after I was finished talking, a young boy came up to me. He had tears in his eyes. “Thanks, mister,” he said. “I really needed to hear that.” I couldn’t believe God had used a simple guy like me to have this kind of impact on a kid.
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
So at last Ilar Sant came to this wood, which people now call St. Hilary's wood because they have forgotten all about Ilar. And he was weary with his wandering, and the day was very hot; so he stayed by this well and began to drink. And there on that great stone he saw the shining fish, and so he rested, and built an altar and a church of willow boughs, and offered the sacrifice not only for the quick and the dead, but for all the wild beasts of the woods and the streams. "And when this blessed Ilar rang his holy bell and began to offer, there came not only the Prince and his servants, but all the creatures of the wood. There, under the hazel boughs, you might see the hare, which flies so swiftly from men, come gently and fall down, weeping greatly on account of the Passion of the Son of Mary. And, beside the hare, the weasel and the pole-cat would lament grievously in the manner of penitent sinners; and wolves and lambs together adored the saint's hierurgy; and men have beheld tears streaming from the eyes of venomous serpents when Ilar Agios uttered 'Curiluson' with a loud voice—since the serpent is not ignorant that by its wickedness sorrow came to the whole world. And when, in the time of the holy ministry, it is necessary that frequent Alleluyas should be chanted and vociferated, the saint wondered what should be done, for as yet none in that place was skilled in the art of song. Then was a great miracle, since from all the boughs of the wood, from every bush and from every green tree, there resounded Alleluyas in enchanting and prolonged harmony; never did the Bishop of Rome listen to so sweet a singing in his church as was heard in this wood. For the nightingale and thrush and blackbird and blackcap, and all their companions, are gathered together and sing praises to the Lord, chanting distinct notes and yet concluding in a melody of most ravishing sweetness; such was the mass of the Fisherman. Nor was this all, for one day as the saint prayed beside the well he became aware that a bee circled round and round his head, uttering loud buzzing sounds, but not endeavouring to sting him. To be short; the bee went before Ilar, and led him to a hollow tree not far off, and straightway a swarm of bees issued forth, leaving a vast store of wax behind them. This was their oblation to the Most High, for from their wax Ilar Sant made goodly candles to burn at the Offering; and from that time the bee is holy, because his wax makes light to shine upon the Gifts.
Arthur Machen (The Secret Glory)
Korie: Ray’s daughter, Rachel, and I were best friends, and they were going to Phil’s house for dinner one night. They invited me to go along. I still remembered Willie from camp, so needless to say, I was just dying to go. I begged my parents to let me go with them. They said yes! I even remember what I wore at Willie’s house-a black top with fluorescent green earrings. Don’t judge…it was the eighties. When Rachel and I got to the Robertsons’ house, the first thing Phil said to us was: “Have you met my boys, Jason Silas and Willie Jess? They’ll make good husbands someday. They’re good hunters and fisherman.” I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The other thing I remember about walking in their home was that Phil and Kay had a sign on the door that said, “Honeymoon in progress.” Phil and Kay have never been shy about their honeymooning…another thing that shocked me about their family. Once we had eaten, Willie took us back to his room, which was actually the laundry room. He made us laugh the whole time. He would stick his thumb in his mouth and pretend that he was blowing up his muscles. He did acupressure tricks and showed us our pressure points. This was all very impressive to a couple of fifth-grade girls. After a while, I decided I was going to try to really impress Korie. I started punching the tiles on the ceiling of the laundry room, which was a trick one of my buddies taught me. I’d rear back and just punch my fist through the ceiling and busted tile would fall over onto the floor. I’m sure she was really impressed.
Willie Robertson (The Duck Commander Family)
An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. “How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked. “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English. “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked. “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket. “But… What do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you could run your expanded enterprise with proper management. The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years, 25 tops.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions señor? Then what?" “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll in to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.
Tim FERRIS
A film, The Lost Continent, throws a clear light on the current myth of exoticism. It is a big documentary on 'the East', the pretext of which is some undefined ethnographic expedition, evidently false, incidentally, led by three or four Italians into the Malay archipelago. The film is euphoric, everything in it is easy, innocent. Our explorers are good fellows, who fill up their leisure time with child-like amusements: they play with their mascot, a little bear (a mascot is indispensable in all expeditions: no film about the polar region is without its tame seal, no documentary on the tropics is without its monkey), or they comically upset a dish of spaghetti on the deck. Which means that these good people, anthropologists though they are, don't bother much with historical or sociological problems. Penetrating the Orient never means more for them than a little trip in a boat, on an azure sea, in an essentially sunny country. And this same Orient which has today become the political centre of the world we see here all flattened, made smooth and gaudily coloured like an old-fashioned postcard. The device which produces irresponsibility is clear: colouring the world is always a means of denying it (and perhaps one should at this point begin an inquiry into the use of colour in the cinema). Deprived of all substance, driven back into colour, disembodied through the very glamour of the 'images', the Orient is ready for the spiriting away which the film has in store for it. What with the bear as a mascot and the droll spaghetti, our studio anthropologists will have no trouble in postulating an Orient which is exotic in form, while being in reality profoundly similar to the Occident, at least the Occident of spiritualist thought. Orientals have religions of their own? Never mind, these variations matter very little compared to the basic unity of idealism. Every rite is thus made at once specific and eternal, promoted at one stroke into a piquant spectacle and a quasi-Christian symbol. ...If we are concerned with fisherman, it is not the type of fishing which is whown; but rather, drowned in a garish sunset and eternalized, a romantic essense of the fisherman, presented not as a workman dependent by his technique and his gains on a definite society, but rather as the theme of an eternal condition, in which man is far away and exposed to the perils of the sea, and woman weeping and praying at home. The same applies to refugees, a long procession of which is shown at the beginning, coming down a mountain: to identify them is of course unnecessary: they are eternal essences of refugees, which it is in the nature of the East to produce.
Roland Barthes (Mythologies)
He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry? Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself? There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube97 were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there 96 Cheated or frustrated himself. 97 The London subway. 64 smiling. "You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked. Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him. "Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.
Virgina Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
When we see a lonely fisherman, we ask where the boat is; when we see a lonely boat, we ask where the fisherman is! We love to see the good friends always together!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Largemouth bass fishing is the biggest crapshoot of any type of fishing, but guys who are good at it can always catch some fish. It’s all about experience.
Charlie Moore (The Mad Fisherman: Kick Some Bass with America's Wildest TV Host)
Fishing is in my Irish blood and a good fisherman always has a line.” He
Jennifer Saints (Wild Irish Ride (Weldon, #1))
Fables and Fortune Hunters An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. “How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked. “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English. “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked. “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket. “But … What do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15–20 years. 25 tops.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions, señor? Then what?” “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos …
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek)
Jesus compares the coming judgment to a fisherman who brings in his haul of fish and separates the good fish from the bad (Matthew 13:47–50). What does he do with the bad ones he doesn't want? He throws them away. He obviously doesn't torture them. They simply die. So too, Jesus says, at the final judgment angels will separate the righteous from the wicked and toss the latter into the furnace. They will go up in flames. For first-century listeners, this "destruction by fire" would not conjure up images of eternal hellfire but rather a house fire—or the execution of criminals by burning. Someone burned at the stake weeps and screams in anguish while dying. But they don't weep and scream for ten days or ten millennia or ten billion years. They die.
Bart D. Ehrman (Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)
so it is the editor’s job to propose alternate scenarios as bait to encourage the sleeping dream to rise to its defense and thus reveal itself more fully. And these scenarios unfold themselves at the largest level (should such-and-such a scene be removed from the film for the good of the whole?) and at the most detailed (should this shot end on this frame or 1/24th of a second later on the next frame?). But sometimes it is the editor who is the dreamer and the director who is the listener, and it is he who now offers the bait to tempt the collective dream to reveal more of itself. As any fisherman can tell you, it is the quality of the bait that determines the kind of fish you catch.
Walter Murch (In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing)
When it came down to it, people really didn’t need that much to survive in the world. It was the world my parents grew up in that had taught them to feel like they needed more. Bank accounts no longer mattered. Fancy cars didn’t count for anything. I guess if you were a good enough fisherman to catch your dinner, having a nice boat was a bonus, but nobody needed a luxurious yacht when a little kayak did the trick. There weren’t many things that were truly important when you counted down to man no longer inheriting the earth, which I guess is what the Great De-evolution was. Diamonds didn’t do anything for you. Gold became just another metal.
Chris Dietzel (The Man Who Watched the World End)
There was a fisherman named Fisher who fished for some fish in a fissure. Till a fish with a grin, pulled the fisherman in. Now they're fishing the fissure for Fisher.   2 How many cookies could a good cook cook If a good cook could cook cookies? A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.
Ben Dover (Tongue Twisters For Kids: More Than 98 Ways To Tie Your Tongue...AGAIN!)
He who prays for others, and gives them a good example and advice, does the work of converting souls and is a fisherman for the Lord's banquet: he should thank God heartily for giving him such an office.
Francisco De Osuna (Third Spiritual Alphabet)
Good Things Happen to Big-Thinking People A tourist walked down a pier and watched a fisherman pull in a large fish, measure it, and throw it back. He caught a second fish, smaller this time, he measured it, and put it in his basket. Oddly, all fish over 10 inches, he discarded. The smaller ones, he kept. Someone asked him, “why?” The fisherman said, “Because my frying pan only measures 10 inches.” Is that foolish? Of course it is, but it’s no more so than when we throw away the biggest ideas and most beautiful dreams that come into your mind simply because your experience is too limited. Start growing now. Start thinking. Big things happen to big-thinking people. You can become the team you want to be. It’s possible. Every man must make his contribution.
Peter G. Tormey (The Thursday Speeches: Lessons in Life, Leadership, and Football from Coach Don James)
And after the second year was over, the Soul said to the young Fisherman at night-time, and as he sat in the wattled house alone, "Lo! now I have tempted thee with evil, and I have tempted thee with good, and thy love is stronger than I am. Wherefore will I tempt thee no longer, but I pray thee to suffer me to enter thy heart, that I may be with thee even as before." "Surely thou mayest enter," said the young Fisherman, "for in the days when with no heart thou didst go through the world thou must have suffered." "Alas!" cried his Soul, "I can find no place of entrance, so compassed about with love is this heart of thine.
Oscar Wilde
{2} Neither did I but vacant seasons spend In this my scribble; nor did I intend But to divert myself in doing this From worser thoughts which make me do amiss. Thus, I set pen to paper with delight, And quickly had my thoughts in black and white. For, having now my method by the end, Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penned It down: until it came at last to be, For length and breadth, the bigness which you see. Well, when I had thus put mine ends together, I shewed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them justify: And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die; Some said, JOHN, print it; others said, Not so; Some said, It might do good; others said, No. Now was I in a strait, and did not see Which was the best thing to be done by me: At last I thought, Since you are thus divided, I print it will, and so the case decided. {3} For, thought I, some, I see, would have it done, Though others in that channel do not run: To prove, then, who advised for the best, Thus I thought fit to put it to the test. I further thought, if now I did deny Those that would have it, thus to gratify. I did not know but hinder them I might Of that which would to them be great delight. For those which were not for its coming forth, I said to them, Offend you I am loth, Yet, since your brethren pleased with it be, Forbear to judge till you do further see. If that thou wilt not read, let it alone; Some love the meat, some love to pick the bone. Yea, that I might them better palliate, I did too with them thus expostulate:-- {4} May I not write in such a style as this? In such a method, too, and yet not miss My end--thy good? Why may it not be done? Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none. Yea, dark or bright, if they their silver drops Cause to descend, the earth, by yielding crops, Gives praise to both, and carpeth not at either, But treasures up the fruit they yield together; Yea, so commixes both, that in her fruit None can distinguish this from that: they suit Her well when hungry; but, if she be full, She spews out both, and makes their blessings null. You see the ways the fisherman doth take To catch the fish; what engines doth he make? Behold how he engageth all his wits; Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets; Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line, Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine: They must be groped for, and be tickled too, Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do. How does the fowler seek to catch his game By divers means! all which one cannot name: His guns, his nets, his lime-twigs, light, and bell: He creeps, he goes, he stands; yea, who can tell Of all his postures? Yet there's none of these Will make him master of what fowls he please. Yea, he must pipe and whistle to catch this, Yet, if he does so, that bird he will miss. If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster-shell; If things that promise nothing do contain What better is than gold; who will disdain, That have an inkling of it, there to look, That they may find it? Now, my little book, (Though void of all these paintings that may make It with this or the other man to take) Is not without those things that do excel What do in brave but empty notions dwell.
John Bunyan (The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream)
the Mexican sierra has “XVII-15-IX” spines in the dorsal fin. These can easily be counted. But if the sierra strikes hard on the line so that our hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his colors pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being—an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from a formalin solution, count the spines, and write the truth “D.XVII-15-IX.” There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed—probably the least important reality concerning either the fish or yourself. It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way…. [W]e were determined not to let a passion for unassailable little truths draw in the horizon and crowd the sky down on us.
John Steinbeck
Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.
Anonymous
Merchant: “. . . If you are without possessions, how can you give?” Siddhartha: “Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish.” Merchant: “Very well, and what can you give? What have you learned that you can give?” Siddhartha: “I can think, I can wait, I can fast.” Merchant: “Is that all?” Siddhartha: “I think that is all.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
True mysticism just allows us to “fish” from a different side of the boat and with different expectations of what success might mean. All the while, we are totally assured that we are already and always floating on a big, deep, life-filled pond. The mystical heart knows there is a fellow Fisherman nearby who is always available for good advice. He stands and beckons from the shores, at the edges of every ordinary life, every unreligious moment, every “secular” occupation, and he is still talking to working people who, like the first disciples, are not important, influential, especially “holy,” trained in theology, or even educated. This is the mystical doorway, which is not narrow but wide and welcoming.
Richard Rohr
Jory knows loud seas and silent seas, heaving seas and mirror seas, seas where your boat feels like the last blink of humankind on a roll so determined and angry that you believe in what you don’t believe in, such as the sea being that halfway thing between heaven and hell, or whatever lies up there and whatever lurks down deep. A fisherman told him once about the sea having two faces. You have to take the both, he said, the good and the bad, and never turn your back on either one of them.
Emma Stonex (The Lamplighters)
I am not a fisherman, but the other day I read some simple rules for fishing. One was this: Be sure your face is toward the light! The skillful fisherman will always see that the sun shines upon his face and that his shadow falls behind him. He who turns his back to the sun and lets his shadow darken the stream has said good-bye to all the trout. That
Ravi Zacharias (I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love)
[...] Land, land, land, nothing remains Of the pacing, famous sea but its speech, And into its talkative seven tombs The anchor dives through the floors of a church. Goodbye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon, To the fisherman lost on the land. He stands alone at the door of his home, With his long-legged heart in his hand
Dylan Thomas (Collected Poems: (1934-1952))
The Old Man came to that meeting disguised as a fisherman, wearing an oilskin jacket and a fisherman’s hat. I don’t know why. No disguise would’a worked by then, for he was red hot. His white beard and hard stare was plastered on every wanted poster from Pittsburgh to Alabama.
James McBride (The Good Lord Bird)
Jeremy George Lake Charles Healthy Living Sports Americans have adopted a healthy lifestyle that includes regular physical activity and good nutrition. While attention to healthy living has long been the norm in professional sports, the emphasis on nutrition has trickled down to high school. Jeremy George Lake Charles Coaches and sports administrators who educate their athletes about healthy lifestyles and choices are taking proactive steps to lead programs to excellence. Intramural sports programs offer team-oriented recreational fitness opportunities for service members to keep fit. The district sports motivators, formerly known as sports liaison officers, are charged with motivating people of all ages to exercise and become more physically active. Children who exercise are more likely to benefit from their abilities and keep active, rather than sit and get bored, which keeps them active, and children who regularly watch their parents exercise and exercise are also more likely to do so, their trainers say. Jeremy George Lake Charles Through sport, children learn important lessons from their lives, which enable them to maintain a healthy lifestyle as adults. Maintaining the body to exercise allows children to develop healthy habits that last a lifetime. You need to have knowledge of the body and ways to improve your condition in order to remain active. Administrators and coaches who emphasize the connection between healthy living and sporting expectations can help their students - athletes understand the importance of healthy choices. However, the best way to make better decisions is to exercise, especially in sports camps. Exercise can make you healthier and happier, whether you exercise or not.
Jeremy George Lake Charles
He was up and on his feet before dawn, walking the stiffness out of his legs, paying a visit to the recovering McGuire, and finding a drop-line so he could catch her the promised fish. As the sun’s golden glow began to peep above the eastern horizon, he ordered the ship hove to. He had spent his earliest years as a fisherman. It didn’t take him long to catch her a fish and true to his word, he quietly carried it down to the galley, filleted it, and throwing some butter into a cast iron frying pan, cooked it for her himself. He didn’t know why he was going to such effort. He told himself that no gently bred woman would go hungry on an American ship, but he wondered if it was more than that. More than feeling a bit sorry for her. More than feeling guilty that his own actions had indeed ruined her life. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that, and everything to do with his own damned pride. He was still thinking about that kiss he’d claimed. He’d been unable to stop thinking about it. Truth be told, his reaction to it had rattled him a bit… and not much rattled Ruaidri O’ Devir. She was English, Anglican, aristocracy, part of a hated race, and the fact that his body had responded to her with lust and longing confused the living hell out of him. No good could come of even allowing himself to think past that kiss. She was his hostage. His bargaining tool for the explosive he’d crossed the Atlantic to get, and he could not let himself be sidetracked by any thoughts of a romantic entanglement.
Danelle Harmon (The Wayward One (The de Montforte Brothers, #5))
What is proximate for one nation, one organization, or even one person may be far out of reach to another. The obvious reason is differences in skills and accumulated resources. My understanding of this was sharpened during an afternoon discussion about helicopters. A man I know only as PJ lives on the East Cape of Baja California, about thirty miles north of San Jose del Cabo, on the Sea of Cortez. He is now a surfer and fisherman, but PJ was once a helicopter pilot, first in Vietnam, and then in rescue work. The land in Baja California is unspoiled by shopping malls, industry, paved highways, or fences. Sitting on a hilltop in the warm winter we could see the gray whales jump and hear their tails slap on the water. Making conversation, I offered that “helicopters should be safer than airplanes. If the engine fails, you can autorotate to the ground. It’s like having a parachute.” PJ snorted. “If your engine fails you have to pull the collective all the way down, get off the left pedal and hit the right pedal hard to get some torque. You have about one second to do this before you are dropping too fast.” He paused and then added, “You can do it, but you better not have to think about it.” “So, everything has to be automatic?” I asked.
Richard P. Rumelt (Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is recommended by many guests in this book. There is one specific takeaway that Naval Ravikant (page 546) has reinforced with me several times on our long walks over coffee. The protagonist, Siddhartha, a monk who looks like a beggar, has come to the city and falls in love with a famous courtesan named Kamala. He attempts to court her, and she asks, “What do you have?” A well-known merchant similarly asks, “What can you give that you have learned?” His answer is the same in both cases, so I’ve included the latter story here. Siddhartha ultimately acquires all that he wants. Merchant: “. . . If you are without possessions, how can you give?” Siddhartha: “Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish.” Merchant: “Very well, and what can you give? What have you learned that you can give?” Siddhartha: “I can think, I can wait, I can fast.” Merchant: “Is that all?” Siddhartha: “I think that is all.” Merchant: “And of what use are they? For example, fasting, what good is that?” Siddhartha: “It is of great value, sir. If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you, or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven him. But, as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. He is not impatient, he is not in need, he can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. ” I think of Siddhartha’s answers often and in the following terms: “I can think” → Having good rules for decision-making, and having good questions you can ask yourself and others. “I can wait” → Being able to plan long-term, play the long game, and not misallocate your resources. “I can fast” → Being able to withstand difficulties and disaster. Training yourself to be uncommonly resilient and have a high pain tolerance.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
There’s no shortcut to becoming a good father. It takes showing sincere interest in our children’s lives. It involves tucking them in at night, praying with them at mealtimes, and sharing our difficulties and successes with them. It means taking our daughters on dates, or taking our sons on adventures. To be a good father, we need to wrestle, read, fish, tickle, shop, camp, and play games with our children. Fatherhood requires time.
Zeke Pipher (In Pursuit: Devotions for the Hunter and Fisherman)
In a small fishing village in Japan, there lived a young, unmarried woman who gave birth to a child. Her parents felt disgraced and demanded to know the identity of the father. Afraid, she refused to tell them. The fisherman she loved had told her, secretly, that he was going off to seek his fortune and would return to marry her. Her parents persisted. In desperation, she named Hakuin, a monk who lived in the hills, as the father. Outraged, the parents took the infant girl up to his door, pounded until he opened it, and handed him the baby, saying "This child is yours; you must care for it!" "'Is that so?" Hakuin said, taking the child in his arms, waving good-bye to the parents. A year passed and the real father returned to marry the woman. At once they went to Hakuin to beg for the return of the child. "We must have our daughter," they said. "Is that so?" said Hakuin, handing the child to them.
Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
He'd was called first Cephas in Aramaic, then Petros, rock, in Greek. Eventually he became Peter and the Gospels proclaimed that Christ said, Upon this rock I shall build my church.' The testimony was the first ancient account he'd ever read that made sense. No supernatural events or miraculous apparitions. No actions contrary to history or logic. No inconsistent details that cast doubt on credibility. Just the testimony by a simple fisherman of how he'd borne witness to a great man, one whose good works and kind words lived on after his death, enough to inspire him to continue the cause.
Steve Berry (The Templar Legacy (Cotton Malone, #1))