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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

Norman Maclean

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Norman Maclean
Age: 87 †
Born: 1902
Born: December 23
Died: 1990
Died: August 2
Author
Journalist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Clarinda
Iowa
Norman Fitzroy Maclean
Time
Probably
World
Waiting
Perfect
Become
Fishermen
Better
Fisherman
Many
Fishing
Much
Watching
Would
Spend

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The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.
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A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.
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...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.
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In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
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He told us about Christ's disciples being fisherman, and we were left to assume...that all great fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
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My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things-trout as well as eternal salvation-come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.
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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.
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When exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change your socks.
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We sat on the bank and the river went by. As always, it was making sounds to itself, and now it made sounds to us. It would be hard to find three men sitting side by side who knew better what a river was saying.
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A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
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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.
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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.
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