Minnows Quotes:

Never attempt to catch a whale with a minnow.

- P. T. Barnum

topic: Whales, Publicity, Minnows

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

- R. H. Tawney

topic: Minnows

We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows.

- Joseph Campbell

source: Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.46, Anchor

topic: Whales, Fishing, Minnows

Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute 'shall'?

- William Shakespeare

source: 'Coriolanus' (1608) act 3, sc. 1, l. 88

topic: Authority, Mark, Minnows

Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love.

- Theodore Roethke

topic: Running, Eye, Simple, Minnows

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

- Austin O'Malley

topic: Life, Lakes, Water, Minnows

I stayed under the moon too long.I am silvered with lust.Dreams flick like minnows through my eyes.My voice is trees tossing in the wind.I loose myself like a flock of blackbirdsstorming into your face.My lightest touch leaves blue prints,bruises on your mind.Desire sandpapers your skinso thin I read the veins and arteriesmaps of routes I will traveltill I lodge in your spine.The night is our fur.We curl inside it licking.

- Marge Piercy

topic: Dream, Eye, Moon, Lodges, Through My Eyes

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

- Lewis Thomas

topic: Writing, Long, Important, Minnows, Crevice

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

- Annie Dillard

topic: Beautiful, Nature, Freedom, Birdsong, Dragonflies

I'm solitary as a pulled tooth, Lonely as an unwelcome truth, Lost as a minnow out of school, A genius in a crop of fools.

- Gail Carson Levine

topic: Lonely, School, Teeth, Minnows

A silence reigns upon the air, Upon the pansies by the shore, Upon the violets, pale and fair, Upon the willow, bending o'er; The reeds and lilies silent grow, The dark green waters silent sleep, Save when the summer breezes blow, Or silvery minnows leap.

- George Arnold

source: George Arnold (1866). “Drift: A Sea-shore Idyl : and Other Poems”, p.81

topic: Summer, Sleep, Dark, Summer Breeze, Minnows

Simplest of blossoms! To mine eye Thou bring'st the summer's painted sky; The May-thorn greening in the nook; The minnows sporting in the brook; The bleat of flocks; the breath of flowers; The song of birds amid the bowers; The crystal of the azure seas; The music of the southern breeze; And, over all, the blessed sun, Telling of halcyon days begun.

- David Macbeth Moir

source: David Macbeth Moir (1852). “The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir”, p.149

topic: Summer, Song, Blessed, Minnows, Azure

Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.

- Virginia Woolf

source: Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.58, Virginia Woolf

topic: Clouds, Sharks, Hands, Desolation, Minnows