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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Swimming

  • The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet it
  • With lusty sinews; throwing it aside,
  • And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
  • Shakespeare.

  • I saw him beat the surges under him,
  • And ride upon their backs; be trod the water,
  • Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
  • The surge most swoln that met him.
  • Shakespeare.

  • There was one did battle with the storm
  • With careless, desperate force; full many times
  • His life was won and lost, as though he reck’d not—
  • No hand did aid him, and he aided none—
  • Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone
  • That man was sav’d.
  • Maturin.

  • How many a time have I
  • Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring
  • The wave all roughen’d; with a swimmer’s stroke
  • Flung the billows back from my drench’d hair,
  • And laughing from my lip the audacious brine
  • Which kiss’d it like a wine-cup rising o’er
  • The waves as they rose, and prouder still
  • The loftier they uplifted me.
  • Byron.