Water Quotes

Quotes About Water From Million Quotes

 

The tides are in our veins. - Robinson Jeffers


We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. - Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732


Pure water is the world’s first and foremost medicine. - Slovakian Proverb


A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. - William Wordsworth


Life is as inexorable as the sea. - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "A Moonglade," first published 1875–76


A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. - Henry David Thoreau


The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. - Annie Dillard


The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land. - Joseph Conrad


Never a ship sails out of the bay
But carries my heart as a stowaway.
- Roselle Mercier Montgomery, The Stowaway


Water flows uphill towards money. - Anonymous, saying in the American West, quoted by Ivan Doig in Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 1986


I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man. - Henry David Thoreau


The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea. - Isak Dinesen


Filthy water cannot be washed. - African Proverb


Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war. - Loren Eiseley


For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.
- e.e. cummings


Most of us, I suppose, are a little nervous of the sea. No matter what its smiles may be, we doubt its friendship. - H.M. Tomlinson


The only cure for seasickness is to sit on the shady side of an old brick church in the country. - Author Unknown


Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither.
- William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality


Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills. - Ambrose Bierce


I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the Sea! I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is the Ocean’s voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. - Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Foot-prints on the Sea-shore"


The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. - Joseph Conrad


Praise the sea; on shore remain. - John Florio


Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. - Blaise Pascal


My connection to the earth is reinforced through the rhythm of the waves. - Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife


The great sea makes one a great sceptic. - Richard Jefferies




But I do see the good side of water now. How good it is when you’re really thirsty, how it glitters and gurgles! How alive it is! - G.K. Chesterton, The Flying Inn, 1914





In one drop of water are found all the secrets of the oceans. - Khalil Gibran


If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. - Loren Eiseley


Boats I see upon the river;
Some, so small they look like toys!
I can, easily, imagine
They are manned by tiny boys.
Then, I see the boats that duty
Takes far off across the sea;
And I send my prayers to Heaven
That protected they will be.
- Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "The Picture I See from my Window" (1940s)


There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet—except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them. - Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), 1889


Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield


And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face
Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace,
By breezes lull’d, or by the storm-blasts driv’n,
Thy majesty uplifts the mind to heaven.
- Robert Montgomery, The Omnipresence of the Deity


Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think. - Robert Henri


Life is like sea-water; it never gets quite sweet until it is drawn up into heaven. - J.P. Richter


My child came to me with the equinox,
The wild wind blew him to my swinging door,
With flakes of tawny foam from off the shore,
And shivering spindrift whirled across the rocks...
Therefore the sea's swift fire is in his veins,
And in his heart the glory of the sea;
Therefore the storm-wind shall his comrade be,
That strips the hills and sweeps the cowering plains.
October, shot with flashing rays and rains,
Inhabits all his pulses; he shall know
The stress and splendor of the roaring gales,
The creaking boughs shall croon him fairy tales,
And the sea's kisses set his blood aglow,
While in his ears the eternal bugles blow.
- May Gillington Byron (1861–1936), "The Storm-Child"


Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. - Herman Melville, Moby Dick


How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean. - Arthur C. Clarke


With maze diversified it woos the plain,
And in meanders winds its wand'ring train;
Branch'd in a thousand rills with sinuous flight;
Now lost recedes—now sparkles on the sight....
Base rill! condemn'd in solitude to stray,
And 'midst the grass in idle lab'rynths play.
Say Loit'rer! whither these vagaries tend?
These busy nothings, destitute of end?
But hence, begone! high Fortune is my guide,
And Ocean waits my tributary tide...
- Dorat, "The Rivulets," translated from French by Charles A. Elton, 1804


Keep your feet on the deck, your hands on the tiller, your eyes on the horizon and your beer in the fridge! - B.E. Marshall


I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it raging and roaring like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free and ending just where it began. - William Hazlitt


There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. - James Russell Lowell


I spin on the circle of wave upon wave of the sea. - Pablo Neruda


The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, — so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be. - Henry David Thoreau


What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Down through the valley and over the hill,
Where the bluebird calls to the whippoorwill;
Where the buttercups and the daisies grow,
And the Summer breezes, so gently, blow,
There is a tiny brook that wends its way
As it twists and it turns, where'er it may;
And over each glistening stone it brings
To us the rippling song that it sings.
- Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "A Spot I Loved" (1940s)


The sea is as near as we come to another world. - Anne Stevenson, "North Sea Off Carnoustie"


A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene. - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


There is indeed, perhaps, no better way to hold communion with the sea than sitting in the sun on the veranda of a fishermen’s cafe. - Joseph W. Beach


I have seen the sea when it is strormy and wild; when it is quiet and serene; when it is dark and moody. And in all its moods, I see myself. - Martin D. Buxbaum (1912–1991), in Table Talk


He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea. - George Herbert


The more simply Life is supported, and the less Stimulus we use, the better — and Happy are the Young and Healthy who are wise enough to be convinced that Water is the best drink, and Salt the best sauce. - William Kitchiner (1775–1827), "Wine," The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life, by Food, Clothes, Air, Exercise, Wine, Sleep, &c. and Peptic Precepts, Pointing Out Agreeable and Effectual Methods to Prevent and Relieve Indigestion, and to Regulate and Strengthen the Action of the Stomach and Bowels, c.1821


The sea hath no king but God alone. - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The White Ship


Upon my soul, this water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage now?... It tastes just like the year 1881 tasted. - G.K. Chesterton, The Flying Inn, 1914


Did you ever feel the tongue dry, the lips parched, and the throat feverish, and then, bringing a goblet filled with pure water to your lips, do you remember the sensation as it trickled over your tongue and gurgled down your throat? Was it not a luxury?... Here is a beverage brewed for us by our Heavenly Father—brewed, too, in beautiful places.... He brews pure water, far away on the mountain top, whose granite peak glitters like gold in the sunlight; away again, on the wide wild sea, where the hurricane howls its mournful melody, and the storm sends back the chorus, sweeping the march of God! - John Bartholomew Gough, English-born U.S. temperance orator (1817–1886)


There brews He beautiful water! And beautiful it always is! You see it glistening in the dewdrop; you hear it singing in the summer rain; you see it sparkling in the ice gem when the trees seem loaded with rich jewels!... dancing in the hailstorm, leaping, foaming, dashing...! See how it weaves a golden gauze for the setting sun, and a silvery tissue for the midnight moon! - John Bartholomew Gough, English-born U.S. temperance orator (1817–1886)