getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ~ but like lemmings running headlong to the sea, we are oblivious.

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; — nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

“They’re crazy.”
“No, Meade. One such is crazy; a lot of them is a lemming death march.”

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river.

We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

It is a strange paradox: Humans drown in the water, fish drown in the land.

If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?

If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?

Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.

Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies.

Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, he said, for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.

What is to be said of someone who flings himself into the Ocean and has no aspiration but to drown himself in it? This is precisely the significance of the so-called "fusion" with a "cosmic consciousness" which is really nothing but the confused and indistinct assemblage of all the psychic influences.

If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd....

It isn't falling in that causes you to drown, it's staying in.