Quotes on Fishes

Somebody said that writers are like otters... Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they'll do a better trick or a different trick because they'd already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We've done it, so let's do something different.

A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.

Process improvement programs are like teaching people how to fish. Strategy maps and scorecards teach people where to fish.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out.

Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line

A fish cannot drown in water,_x000D_ A bird does not fall in air._x000D_ In the fire of creation,_x000D_ God doesn't vanish:_x000D_ The fire brightens._x000D_ Each creature God made_x000D_ must live in its own true nature;_x000D_ How could I resist my nature,_x000D_ That lives for oneness with God?

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without consideration.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me - the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love - He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions.

The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

Now, training fighters is like trying to catch fish. It's not the strength but the technique.

Fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air. It brings meekness and inspiration, reduces our egoism, soothes our troubles and shames our wickedness. It is discipline in the equality of men--for all men are equal before fish.

I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.

It's not to give people fish It's not to teach them how to fish It's to build a new and better fishing industry

Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking. Center your country in the Tao and evil will have no power. Not that it isn't there, but you'll be able to step out of its way. Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.

If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it's only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.