What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the newest poor-John. A strange fish!
If we use our fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. The heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower...The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land.
Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race.
I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake on Earth as a drop of oil on my foot.
There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.
Give me mine angle, we'll to th' river: there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finned fishes. My bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up, I'll think them every one an Antony, And say, 'Ah, ha! are caught!'
No lake so still but it has its wave. No circle so perfect but that it has its blur. I would change things for you if I could; As I can't you must take them as they are.