Jonathan Raban Quotes

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wanderertill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

The River adapts itself to whatever route prove possible, but the river never forgets its one objective: the sea. So fragile at its source, it gradually gathers the strength of the other rivers in encounters. And, after a certain point, its power is absolute.

A river without banks is a large puddle.

There goes a river dragging an ocean behind it.

An undisturbed river is as perfect as we will ever know, every refractive slide of cold water a glimpse of eternity.

Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.

Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!

If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.

You couldn't change a river into a sea, but you could trace a new channel for it to follow.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

I thought how lovely and how strange a river is.

The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.

The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

Spirit is Life. It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea.

I think of a writer as a river: you reflect what passes before you.

Silence is the sea, and speech is like the river. The sea is seeking you: don't seek the river. Don't turn your head away from the signs offered by the sea.

Talk not of the river or lake To those who have looked on the sea.

Don't swim against the current. Stay in the river, become the river; and the river is already going to the sea. This is the great teaching.

Of course, the English countryside is completely artificial. It was naturally a forest; they chopped down the trees and made it into what it is now: really a beautiful country.

POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.