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SWIMMING QUOTES
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... marathon swimming is the most difficult physical, intellectual and emotional battleground I have encountered, and each time I win, each time I touch the other shore, I feel worthy of any other challenge life has to offer.
(Diana Nyad (b. 1949), U.S. long-distance swimmer. Other Shores, ch. 8 (1978). The champion marathon swimmer had swum extremely difficult and even dangerous courses, some taking dozens of hours to complete.)
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The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one's inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother's grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.
(Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), U.S. president. The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928, p. 48, Stanford University (1928).)
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Whenever parents become overly invested in a particular skill or accomplishment, a child's fear of failure multiplies. This is why some children refuse to get into the pool for a swimming lesson, or turn their back on Daddy's favorite sport.
(Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century), U.S. journalist. Child-Wise, ch. 2 (1994).)
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I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.
(John Donne (c. 1572-1631), British divine and metaphysical poet. letter, Sept. 1608. Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, ed. John Hayward (1929).)
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I may be smelly and I may be old,
Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools,
But where my fish float by I bless their swimming
And I like the people to bathe in me, especially women.
(Stevie Smith (1902-1971), British poet, novelist. The River God (l. 1-4). . . Faber Book of Nonsense Verse, The. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. (1979) Faber and Faber.)
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All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
(F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), U.S. author. Letter (undated) to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald. The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945).)
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The seventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming.
(Unknown. The Twelve Days of Christmas (l. 34-36). . . Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, comps. (1955) Oxford University Press.)
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