Ebb

Famous quotes containing the word ebb:

    Like to the Pontic Sea,
    Whose icy current and compulsive course
    Ne’er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
    To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
    Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace
    Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
    Till that a capable and wide revenge
    Swallow them up.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
    Claspest the limits of mortality,
    And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
    Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

    For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)