"If God should grant that I fish till my dying day, upon my last cast I most humbly pray, that when safe in His net I am peacefully asleep, the good Lord will judge me as big enough to keep"

Unknown

“There don't have to be a thousand fish in a river; let me locate a good one and I'll get a thousand dreams out of him before I catch him - and, if I catch him, I'll turn him loose.”

Jim Deren

“And if the angler catches the fish with difficulty, then there is no man merrier than he is in his spirits.”

Dame Juliana Berners, 1450

“To capture the fish is not all of fishing. Yet there are circumstances which make this philosophy hard to accept.”

Zane Grey

“...when the lawyer is swallowed up with business and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess our selvs in as much quietness as these silent silver streams...”

Izaak Walton, 1653

“The real lessons of fishing are the ones that come after you've caught the fish. They have to do with solitude, gratitude, patience, perspective, humor, and the sublime coffee break.”

John Gierach

“My biggest worry is that my wife (when I'm dead) will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it.”

Koos Brandt

“When a man picks up a fly rod for the first time, he may not know, he has been born again.”

Joseph D. Farris

“Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Matthew 4:19

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1

“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.”

Norman MacLean
A River Runs Through It

“When you are DRY FLY fishing in the rain are you really Dry Fly Fishing?”

Unknown

“Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God.”

Tony Blake

“I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout.”

Paul O'Neil

“Who ever said, "A bad day fishing is always better than a good day at work", never sank their drift boat.”

Mike Learmouth

“Fishermen are born honest, but they get over it.”

Ed Zern

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

Henry David Thoreau

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.”

John Steinbeck

“Fly fishing is proof positive, that it only takes one to tangle.”

Ed Personius
aka "Wrestles with Knots" 

“I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it."

Groucho Marx

“B. I. B. L. E.  = Basic Information Before Leaving Earth”

Unknown 

“Be ye Fishers of Men -- You catch them & he'll clean them."

Unknown

“I have caught many a trout in a particular meadow, that the very shape and the enamelled colour of him hath been such as hath joyed me to look on him: and I have then, with much pleasure, concluded with Solomon, 'Everything is beautiful in his season.' ”

Izaak Walton, 1676