Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
--
Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen (published 1655). Alternately reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) as: "Passions are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb" and titled The Silent Lover. Compare: "Altissima qu?que flumina minimo sono labi", (translated: "The deepest rivers flow with the least sound"), Q. Curtius, vii. 4. 13. "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep", William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iii. sc. i.Sir Walter Raleigh
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I consider those who would prevent the birth of the passions almost as foolish as those who would destroy them, and those who think this has been my object hitherto are greatly mistaken.
But should we reason rightly, if from the fact that passions are natural to man, we inferred that all the passions we feel in ourselves and behold in others are natural? Their source, indeed, is natural; but they have been swollen by a thousand other streams; they are a great river which is constantly growing, one in which we can scarcely find a single drop of the original stream. Our natural passions are few in number; they are the means to freedom, they tend to self-preservation. All those which enslave and destroy us have another source; nature does not bestow them on us; we seize on them in her despite.Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Them folks who are sudden, aint apt tew be solid; lively streams are alwus shallow.
Josh Billings
True, thy fault is great,
But we are many that will plead for thee;
We and our sisters, dwellers in the streams
That murmur blithely to the joyous mood,
And dolefully to sadness. Not a nook
In darkest woods but some of us are there,
To watch the flowers, that else would die unseen.Hartley Coleridge
A few little flowers will spring up briefly in the dry gulley through which torrents of water pass occasionally. But it is steady streams that bring thick and needed crops. In the agriculture of the soul that has to do with nurturing attributes, flash floods are no substitute for regular irrigation."
Neal A. Maxwell
Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
Edie Brickell
Raleigh, Sir Walter
Rall, Ted
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