Great Surfers Quotes

For your life to be great,your faith must be bigger than your fear.

Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life. The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan. The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying.

The disabled elite, if you will. The surfer with one arm, the mountain climber with no legs, a drummer with one hand. And, deep down, I knew I should be proud of them. They were my community, and they were only working to erase stigma for the rest of us. But I didn’t feel proud. I felt bitter. Jealous too. Angry that they weren’t just great surfer, record-breaking mountain climber, and successful drummer. To me, they were a reminder that the world will always view me differently—put me in a different bracket—even if I landed myself on a pedestal. I didn’t want to achieve despite myself. I didn’t want to defy anything. I just wanted to feel ordinary. To not overcompensate every day. I wanted to be bad at things and have people laugh at me because that’s life. I didn’t want pity.

Yesterday you told me that life is a growth school, Father Mike. Every person and every experience comes to us to teach us the lesson we most need to learn at that particular point of our journey. We can either awaken to this act of nature, or we can turn a blind eye to it and, in doing so, keep repeating the mistakes of the past until the pain becomes so great that we have no choice but to change.

It's like whenever a friend wants to show me their favorite movie... ... and it's great and all, but... ... I'd rather see something that they hadn't seen before. So we could watch it for the first time together.

For your life to be great, your faith must be bigger than your fears. It’s only when you have faith in the fact that, as you say, the universe is a friendly place and it’s bigger than the fears that have limited you—only then will your brightest life come calling.

Suddenly thousands of raindrops fall before me. The movement of the expanding rings through the rosy water triggers some kind of trance. I watch the droplets transform into mini-swells of energy—varying wave amplitudes crossing over each other from all directions. Dynamic, chaotic, brilliant. Both infinite and finite at once. Time freezes and it feels as if my consciousness is floating. I am the raindrop, and the cloud, and the sky, and the setting sun. On this unusual frequency, I feel the connectedness of all things, a sensation of deep belonging. All one and simultaneously separate. Feeling becomes understanding—this great dichotomy dissolves. In this strange, brief moment, I am expansive like the Milky Way, minute like plankton, powerful like the tides, as solid as the volcanic crater, fragile like a spider’s web, patient like the trees, and empty as a cloudless sky.

What are you doing?” “Coming to pick you up in a little bit,” he said. I loved it when he took charge. It made my heart skip a beat, made me feel flushed and excited and thrilled. After four years with J, I was sick and tired of the surfer mentality. Laid-back, I’d discovered, was no longer something I wanted in a man. And when it came to his affection for me, Marlboro Man was anything but that. “I’ll be there at five.” Yes, sir. Anything you say, sir. I’ll be ready. With bells on. I started getting ready at three. I showered, shaved, powdered, perfumed, brushed, curled, and primped for two whole hours--throwing on a light pink shirt and my favorite jeans--all in an effort to appear as if I’d simply thrown myself together at the last minute. It worked. “Man,” Marlboro Man said when I opened the door. “You look great.” I couldn’t focus very long on his compliment, though--I was way too distracted by the way he looked. God, he was gorgeous. At a time of year when most people are still milky white, his long days of working cattle had afforded him a beautiful, golden, late-spring tan. And his typical denim button-down shirts had been replaced by a more fitted dark gray polo, the kind of shirt that perfectly emphasizes biceps born not from working out in a gym, but from tough, gritty, hands-on labor. And his prematurely gray hair, very short, was just the icing on the cake. I could eat this man with a spoon. “You do, too,” I replied, trying to will away my spiking hormones. He opened the door to his white diesel pickup, and I climbed right in. I didn’t even ask him where we were going; I didn’t even care. But when we turned west on the highway and headed out of town, I knew exactly where he was taking me: to his ranch…to his turf…to his home on the range. Though I didn’t expect or require a ride from him, I secretly loved that he drove over an hour to fetch me. It was a throwback to a different time, a burst of chivalry and courtship in this very modern world. As we drove we talked and talked--about our friends, about our families, about movies and books and horses and cattle.

I thought you were dead.” “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,

] The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari [ ] The Greatness Guide [ ] The Greatness Guide, Book 2 [ ] The Leader Who Had No Title [ ] Who Will Cry When You Die? [ ] Leadership Wisdom from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari [ ] Family Wisdom from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari [ ] Discover Your Destiny with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari [ ] The Secret Letters of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari [ ] The Mastery Manual [ ] The Little Black Book for Stunning Success [ ] The Saint, the Surfer, and the CEO

Humans can balance on strange surfaces,” Odrade said. “Even on unpredictable ones. It’s called ‘getting in tune.’ Great musicians know it. Surfers I watched when I was a child on Gammu, they knew it. Some waves throw you but you’re prepared for that. You climb back up and go at it once more.

What did you think about it?

Dave, Spidroth, Porkins, Alex and Carl,” said the rabbit. “I need your help. I have a mission of great importance for you.” “Hey, how come it’s ‘Dave, Spidroth, Porkins, Alex and Carl’?” said Carl. “Why’s my name last?

It is only against the big waves that he is required to use all his skill, all his courage and concentration to overcome; only then can he realize the true limits of his capacities. At that point he often attains his peak. In other words, the more challenging the obstacle he faces, the greater the opportunity for the surfer to discover and extend his true potential. The potential may have always been within him, but until it is manifested in action, it remains a secret hidden from himself. The obstacles are a very necessary ingredient to this process of self-discovery. Note that the surfer in this example is not out to prove himself; he is not out to show himself or the world how great he is, but is simply involved in the exploration of his latent capacities. He directly and intimately experiences his own resources and thereby increases his self-knowledge.

Humans can balance on strange surfaces," Odrade said. "Even on unpredictable ones. It's called 'getting in tune.' Great musicians know it. Surfers I watched when I was a child on Gammu, they knew it. Some waves throw you but you're prepared for that. You climb back up and go at it once more.

What happened to John after he posted the video to Instagram? Well, he went about his life. Lots of people made fun of him. He got trolled. Then, he went surfing and felt great.

California Dreamin’ Cali was a cute little surfer girl from Santa Ana. She was about this tall, had a sweet laugh, great smile, deliriously long sun-bleached hair, and a nice, tight little IM. We liked to pretend we were in love. She used to send me photos of herself in the Victoria’s Secrets dressing room at the mall with her iPhone while she was sitting in Physics class. “There’s more where that came from,” she would wink. She took me for a drive one night— just her, her iPhone, and I. We ended up out on the beach where she lay me out beside her on a blanket, flipped me open, and began texting with a warm, seductive voice into my ear. I thought I was roaming. “Touch me—here,” she teased. And forwarded me a photo of the inside of her thigh. I was all thumbs. I moved my hand slowly up the inside of her LCD. She giggled as I started caressing her Instagram application. “Do you love me?” She purred. “I thought we were pretending.” I replied.

THE DREAM OF back-to-nature surfing solitude had a predictable by-product: rank nostalgia. A high percentage of the stories I wrote in my journals involved time travel, most often back to an earlier California. Imagine going back to the days of the Chumash Indians, or the Spanish missions, if you could just take a modern surfboard with you. Malibu had been breaking exactly like this, unridden, for centuries, eons. You would probably be worshipped as a god by the locals once they saw you surf, and they would feed you, and you could ride great waves with perfect concentration—uncontested ownership, accumulating mastery—for the rest of your days. There were a couple of photos in Surfing Guide to Southern California that illustrated, to my mind, just how narrow a margin in time we had all missed paradise by. One was of Rincon, taken in 1947 from the mountain behind the point on a sheet-glass, ten-foot day. The caption, unnecessarily, invited the reader to note “a tantalizing absence of people.” The other was of Malibu in 1950. It showed a lone surfer streaking across an eight-foot wall, with members of the public playing obliviously on the sand in the foreground. The surfer was Bob Simmons, a brilliant recluse who essentially invented the modern finned surfboard. He drowned while surfing alone in 1954.

California Dreamin’" Cali was a cute little surfer girl from Santa Ana. She was about this tall, had a sweet laugh, great smile, deliriously long sun-bleached hair, and a nice, tight little IM. We liked to pretend we were in love. She used to send me photos of herself in the Victoria’s Secrets dressing room at the mall with her iPhone while she was sitting in Physics class. “There’s more where that came from,” she would wink. She took me for a drive one night— just her, her iPhone, and I. We ended up out on the beach where she lay me out beside her on a blanket, flipped me open, and began texting with a warm, seductive voice into my ear. I thought I was roaming. “Touch me—here,” she teased. And forwarded me a photo of the inside of her thigh. I was all thumbs. I moved my hand slowly up the inside of her LCD. She giggled as I started caressing her Instagram application. “Do you love me?” She purred. “I thought we were pretending.” I replied.

Did I live wisely?’ ‘Did I love well?’ and ‘Did I serve greatly?

Hi! Has this ever happened to you? You’ve just finished the latest Dave the Villager book, and all you want to do is talk about it. Will Dave recover from the latest cliffhanger? Will Robo-Steve ever come back for good? Will we really have to wait until Book 50 to see the enderdragon??? So you go and see your friends at school, but all they want to talk about is Surfer Villager. “The Surfer Villager books are great,” they tell you. “You should check them out!” “Don’t talk to me about Surfer Villager!” you yell at them. “The Dave the Villager books are the only books I’ve ever read, and they’re the only books I ever will read! Dave Villager is the greatest author of all time!” “Wait,” they say, “isn’t Dave Villager the character, not the author?” “No, you morons,” you scream, “Dave Villager is the author, and Dave the Villager is the character!” “That’s very confusing,” they reply. “No it’s not!” you bellow, spraying them with spittle. “Is the author’s surname really Villager?” they ask. “Come to think of it, is his first name really Dave?” “Is Dr Block really a doctor?!” you roar. “I DON’T THINK SO!!!” “He might be,” they say. “SHUT UP!!!” you exclaim. And then you run home crying. When you get home, your Aunt Mavis gives you a big hug. “What’s the matter, dear?” Aunt Mavis asks. “Those idiots at school don’t know anything about Dave the Villager,” you sob, wiping the tears from your eyes. “All I want to do is find someone I can discuss my favorite books with. I want to discuss the mythology of the Old People, and whether it’s remained consistent throughout all 28 books! I want to debate whether or not Dave could have prevented the destruction of the mirror universe in Book 20! I want someone to read my Boggo fanfiction!” “Oh, I don’t know about any of that,” says Aunt Mavis. “I haven’t read any unofficial Minecraft fiction in years. I used to read Diary of an Angry Alex, but when the books stopped I was devastated. I vowed never to read any Minecraft books ever again. And that’s a promise I will keep until the day I die. Now I only read Roblox novels.

Claire looked at me and said, “Do you have any idea who this other engineered child is, Jimmy? It would be really great to find him or her.

school to my house and go fishing?” I thought about it for a moment and then said, “Sure, but I have an errand to do after school. Maybe I could come over about an hour after school’s out?” Brayden smiled. “That would be great. Let me show you where I live on this map.” Brayden removed a map from his inventory and unfolded it. In the center of the map was Zombie Bane. He pointed to an area located to the northeast

If they wanted me to be polite, I’d show them polite. “King Trey, most noblest of highest highnesses, even more exalted than the lowly Ender King,” I said, sneering at the King, “have you in your great brain pan, home of your mental smarts, any idea where the great artifact known as the Pickaxe of Resurrection might be upon your beloved, chorus-fruity island?

great Jimmy Slade? (I know, I know, calling yourself “great” is pretty arrogant, but you gotta admit what I did was pretty dominant.)

We decided to boil our list down to just a few key criteria around which we could easily evaluate candidates. We settled on six: •​An intense desire to win: We didn’t want a new CEO who was adept at explaining why something didn’t happen, but rather someone who could figure out how to win even if unanticipated problems cropped up. •​Intelligence: We wanted someone smart and analytical who could avoid problems before they arose. •​The ability to think independently: Fad surfers need not apply. •​Courage: My successor had to be capable of making bold decisions, while also checking afterward to verify that these decisions were correct. •​Curiosity: We needed a CEO who could stay fresh over time by exposing him or herself to novel ideas—someone who was self-aware and dedicated to learning. •​An ability to motivate and build a strong culture: Our next CEO had to be able to mobilize the company behind the strategy, hiring great people and motivating them.

A graph of seal levels over the past five million years looks like a cross section through choppy surf. In yet deeper time, more than seventy million years ago, the height of this surf was magnificent. All of Florida and half of Georgia were shallow seas dotted with islands. The sabal palm’s ancestors likely grew on the sand of these beaches and islands with dinosaurs nibbling on their fruits. On the scale of thousands of years, sand behaves like water. A dune is a ripple. An island is a cresting wave. The sand water rolls, churns, and streams under the power of ocean and wind. Sabal palm is a surfer on those waves.

We lost not a single animal that night. Every last duck, koala, and roo turned up fine, healthy, and accounted for. After three months, as Wes’s wounds healed up completely, Steve went to him with a proposition. “What do you reckon, Wes,” he said, “are you up for a board meeting?” They grabbed their surfboards, and we all headed to the Fiji Islands. Tavarua was an exclusive atoll, beautiful, with great surf. Steve and Wes also surfed Namotu and caught some unbelievable waves. One day the face of the waves coming in had to have been sixteen feet plus. Just paddling out to the break was epic. I didn’t realize how much effort it took until we had a guest with us, a young lady from Europe who was a mad keen surfer. Steve paddled out to catch some waves, and she paddled out after him. After several minutes, it became apparent that she was having trouble. We idled the boat closer and pulled her in. She collapsed in complete exhaustion. The current had been so strong that, even paddling as hard as she could, she was able only to hold her own in the water. I tried to photograph Steve from the boat. Peter, the captain, very obligingly ran up the side of the wave exactly at the break. I had a great side angle of Steve as he caught each wave. But the whole process scared me. The boat rose up, up, up on the massive swell. As the green water of the crest started to lip over the boat, we crashed over the top, smashed into the back of the wave, and slid down the other side. “It’s okay,” I yelled to Captain Peter. “What?” he shouted, unable to hear as the boat pounded through the swell. “What’s okay?” I gestured back toward the shore. “I don’t need such…incredibly…good…shots,” I stuttered. I just wasn’t confident enough to take photographs while surfing in a boat. I decided to be more of a beach bunny, filming beach breaks or shooting the surfing action from the safety and stability of the shoreline.