Lakes quotes
749 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside lakes — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The warrior who had gone out from the lake to save his people by slaying the evil one was now just a boy sitting in the dirt with his fingers in a mane of blond hair. He stared at nothing. Expected nothing. Planned nothing. Just sat."
"In the middle of Siberia I guess there's a lake that big [ like the Great Lakes], but there are practically no other lakes that big with fresh water."
"Most mystics do not want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it. A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake."
"Never, under any circumstance, do I touch soup, as I do not believe in building a meal on a lake."
"No, I don't take soup. You can't build a meal on a lake."
"Monsters are getting more uppity, too (...) I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door (...) and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That's the respect you get."
"Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp, cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality. But after so many times, even the shock wears off."
"(with trout) we are touching something unrestricted, wild and arcane, beyond the reach of those who carefully maintain one-dimensional lives. There is, I tell myself, someone in the city nearby whose one contact today with unreconstructed nature will be to step into a diminutive pile of poodle excrement"
"President David O. McKay put it beautifully when he said, speaking of mothers, 'This ability and willingness properly to rear children, the gift to love, and eagerness, yes, longing to express it in soul development, make motherhood the noblest office or calling in the world. . .' (Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, pp. 453-54)."
"and when he moved it was like watching oil spread across a lake, smooth and fluid, almost vicious"
"He who holds the hook is aware in what waters many fish are swimming."
"Yet compared with the serious things of life, fishing is after all rather trivial. The thoughtful angler must frankly confess this."
"Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum."
"On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there."
"The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube."
"As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares."
"Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake."
"Fishing from a boat seems like dilettante bullshit - like hunting wild boar with a can of spray paint from the safety of a pick-up truck"
"I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me."
"Music is an ocean, but the repertory is hardly even a lake; it is a pond."
