Quotes
Quotes about Men
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.
The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.
If I have done any deed worthy of remembrance, that deed will be my monument. If not, no monument can preserve my memory.
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.
Tombs are the clothes of the dead; a grave is but a plain suit; a rich monument is an embroidered one.
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.
To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief.
But monument themselves memorials need.
You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was "the scourge of God."
Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.
I have reared a memorial more enduring than brass, and loftier than the regal structure of the pyramids, which neither the corroding shower nor the powerless north wind can destroy; no, not even unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not entirely die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion. [Lat., Exegi monumentum aera perennius Regalique situ pyramidum altius, Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere aut innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam.]
Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat.
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a life-long monument.
For men use, if they have an evil tourne, to write it in marble; and whoso doth us a good tourne we will write it in duste.
The need has gone; the memorial thereof remains. [Lat., Factum abiit; monumenta manent.]
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.-- This grave shall have a living monument. An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; Till then in patience our proceeding be.
If we work upon marble it will perish. If we work upon brass time will efface it. If we rear temples they will crumble to dust. But if we work upon men's immortal minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God and love of their fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.
He made an instrument to know If the moon shine at full or no; That would, as soon as e'er she shone straight, Whether 'twere day or night demonstrate; Tell what her d'ameter to an inch is, And prove that she's not made of green cheese.
The devil's in the moon for mischief; they Who call'd her chaste, methinks, began too soon Their nomenclature; there is not a day, The longest, not the twenty-first of June, Sees half the business in a wicked way, On which three single hours of moonshine smile-- And then she looks so modest all the while!
Into the sunset's turquoise marge The moon dips, like a pearly barge; Enchantment sails through magic seas, To fairland Hesperides, Over the hills and away.
No mere man since the Fall, is able in this life perfectly to keep the Commandments.
Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements the inquiring constructive mind.
