A River Runs through it Quotes
– A River Runs through it Quotes –
A River Runs through It Quotes is coined from a novel and a movie. The novel was published in 1976 by Norman Maclean, whose focus is the story of two brothers who have opposing views on life. While the film was premiered in 1992.
A River Runs Through it Quotes
Enjoy these a river runs through it quotes as you read on!
1. “One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.”
2. “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
3. “At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear.”
4. “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
5. “Slowly we became silent, and silence itself if an enemy to friendship.”
6. “At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.”
7. “Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as “our brother’s keepers,” possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”
8. “All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”
A River Runs Through It Quotes About Montana and Sunrise
9. “When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say “more perfect” because she said if a thing is perfect it can’t be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.”
10. “Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.” “a river runs through it quotes”
11. “Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length.”
12. I rarely start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
13. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
14. I am haunted by waters.”
More of a River Runs through it Quotes
15. “I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”
16. “…life every now and then becomes literature…as if life had been made and not happened.”
17. “When I looked, I knew I might never again see so much of the earth so beautiful, the beautiful being something you know added to something you see, in a whole that is different from the sum of its parts. What I saw might have been just another winter scene, although an impressive one. But what I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again. So what I saw because of what I knew was a kind of death with the marvellous promise of less than a three-day resurrection.”
18. “At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.”
19. “To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy”
20. “I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched… Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
Quotes from the Novel
21. Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.”
22. “As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God’s rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word “beautiful.”
23. “You like to tell true stories, don’t you?’ he asked, and I answered, ‘Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.’ “a river runs through it quotes”
24. Then he asked, ‘After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?
25. Only then will you understand what happened and why.
26. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
27. “Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn’t think. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear”
Quotes from the Movie
28. “If he comes back,” she nodded. I thought I saw tears in her eyes but I was mistaken. In all my life, I was never to see her cry. And also he was never to come back. Without interrupting each other, we both said at the same time, “Let’s never get out of touch with each other.” And we never have, although her death has come between us.”
29. “What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was.”
30. “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
31. “Ahead and to the west was our ranger station – and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.”
32. “Poets talk about “spots of time,” but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.”
Great Quotes from a River Runs through it
33. “Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.
34. “Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.”
35. “So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”
36. “We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.”
37. “Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart—I don’t know what it is or where, because sometimes it is in my arms and sometimes in my throat and sometimes nowhere in particular except somewhere deep. Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.”
38. “On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.”
Less Quotes On a River Runs through it
39. “Then he told me, “In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”
40. “That’s because you are a preacher first and then a fisher,” I told him. “If you ask Paul, he will tell you that the words are formed out of water.”
41. “No,” my father said, “you are not listening carefully. The water runs over the words. Paul will tell you the same thing.”
42. “At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”
43. “Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as “our brothers’ keepers,” possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts. It will not let us go.”
44. “Poets talk about “spots of time,” but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.” “a river runs through it quotes”
45. “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
46. “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people that go with it? Only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
Norman Maclean Quotes
47. “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
48. I am haunted by waters.”
49. “You can love completely without complete understanding.”
50. “If you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.” ― Norman Maclean
51. “For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us.” Reverend MacLean
52. “Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.”
53. “And I knew just as surely, just as clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last.” Norman Maclean “a river runs through it quotes”
54. “Oh, I’ll never leave Montana, brother.” Reverend MacLean
Other Quotes from the Movie and Film
55. “I find I am humming softly; not to the music, but something else; some place else; a place remembered; a field of grass where no one seemed to have been; except a deer; and the memory is strengthened by the feeling of you, dancing in my awkward arms.” Norman Maclean
56. “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.” Narrator
57. “Each one of here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed?” Reverend MacLean
58. “Dear Jesse, as the moon lingers a moment over the bitterroots, before its descent into the invisible, my mind is filled with song.”
59. “Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost the Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.” – Narrator
60. “My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things–trout as well as eternal salvation–came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy.”
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CSN Team.
