Jonathan Brownlee Quotes

I swam at school a lot. Long-distance swimming in pools, and diving, then when we moved to Hastings when I was 13 I used to swim in the sea all the time; I loved it out of season and when it was rough.

I do a lot of swimming, both in the ocean and in the pool.

I've gradually gained more confidence swimming for distance in the open sea, but I still return to the rock pools.

I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.

We didn't have the lane ropes, we had to get up higher in the water to avoid the little waves.

Mr. President: When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution.

With marathon swimming, I think you have to use your head more than you do in pool events, which are more automatic. You can just go out and replicate your training pace in competition. With the marathon, though, you have to contend with nature, physical contact, and time.

To find where you are going, you must know where you are.

...as the day wore on I watched the birds all flying in one direction, and said, Land lies there.

Paris is not so square. I'm not good at the geography of the city in Paris, so I'm always lost. Here, in New York, you can never be lost. In Paris, even when I walk to my gallery or whatever, I always take another route, because Paris is not built that way.

A man went to Istanbul, his first visit there. On his way to a business meeting, this man lost his way. He began raging at himself for getting lost, until a realization allowed him to transcend his ire. "How can I be lost? I've never been here before?" pp 104-105

When we are lost in the woods, the sight of a signpost is a great matter.

So young a child ought to know which way she's going, even if she doesn't know her own name!

Above all things, the plainsmen had to have in instinct for direction. I never had a compass in my life, but I was never lost.

I only pick one thing; North, South, East or West. I just get on the road and go. That's the point. The only governor I give myself is what's the time limit.

I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.

Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.

I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it's not just some abstract romantic idea, it's something very real to me. See, I've expanded my home.

A constant ongoing joke among the people that I travel with is my absolutely hopeless sense of direction. I'm able to get lost a half an hour from camp. I don't know how I do this.

That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

Acknowledging that sometimes, often at very crucial times, you really have no idea where you are going or even where the path lies. A the same time, you can very well know something about where you are now (even if it is knowing that you are lost, confused, enraged or without hope).

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

I never panic when I get lost. I just change where it is I want to go.

A place is yours when you know where all the roads go.