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water quotes

  • Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.476, 5 Sept.

  • Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water.

    -Anonymous
    c.1978  Publicity slogan for Jaws 2.

  • Bill was a tropical fish. His native habitat was hot water.

    -Anonymous
      Of  William  J Casey of the CI A and his role in the Iran arms sales. Quoted in the NewYork Times,19  Jul.

  • An old pond A frog jumps in The sound of water

    - Matsuo Basho
    c.1689  Quoted in Hugh Cortazzi  The Japanese Achievement (1990).

  • All your better deeds Shall be in water writ, but this in marble.

    - Francis and Fletcher,John Beaumont
      Philaster (published1620), act 5.

  •    Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis 49:4.

  • He asked for water, and she brought him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead. The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice,Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots?

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Judges 5:25^8.

  •    For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again: neither doth God respect any person.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Samuel14:14.

  • I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 22:14.

  • Asthehart pantethafter thewaterbrooks, sopantethmy soul after thee,O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 42:1^2.

  • O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dryand thirsty land, where no water is.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 63:1.

  • If thine enemy behungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the L shall reward thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDProverbs 25:21^2.

  • Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah12:3.

  • And a manshall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 32:2.

  • Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ezekiel12:18.

  • And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting uponhim: And loavoicefromheaven, saying,This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 3:16^17.

  • When therulerof the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John 2:9^10.

  • But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John19:34.

  • Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Timothy 5:23.

  • I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 21:6.

  • I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like winethrough water, and altered the colour of my mind.

    - EmilyJane Bronte« 
      Wuthering Heights, ch.9.

  •    The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes.

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'The Great Lover'.

  • But somewhere, beyond Space and Time Is wetter water, slimier slime!

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'Heaven'.

  • There is no hope of bailing out of a speedboat.You hit the water and become so much pulp.

    - Donald Malcolm Campbell
    Quoted in DouglasYoung- James Donald Campbell:  An Informal Biography (1968).

  • His blade struck the watera full second before any other†until, as the boats began to near the winning post his ownwas dipping inthe water twiceas fast as anyother.

    - F T Desmond Coke
      Sandford of Merton, ch.12. Often misquoted as'All rowed fast but none so fast as stroke'.

  • Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.2.

  • Then the wet, winding roads, Brown bogs with black water; And my thoughts on white ships And the King o' Spain's daughter.

    - Padraic Colum
      'A Drover'.

  •    A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls

    -Korzeniowski

  • Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit. The conscious water saw its God, and blushed.

    - Richard Crashaw
      Of the water which  Jesus turned into wine at Cana. Epigrammata Sacra,'Aquae in Vinum Versae' (translated by Dryden).

  •    why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voices of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
      is 5,'Two, III'.

  • 'The name of those fabulous animals (pagan, I regret to say) who used to sing in the water, has quite escaped me.'Mr George Chuzzlewit suggested 'Swans'.'No,'said Mr Pecksniff.'Not swans.Very like swans, too. Thank you.' The nephew†propounded 'Oysters'.'No,'said Mr Picksniff†'nor oysters.But by no means unlike oysters† Wait! Sirens. Dear me! sirens, of course.'

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^4  Martin Chuzzlewit, ch.4.

  • If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, doyou suppose Providence would have cast my lot inan island?

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
      Miss Pross.  A  Tale of  Two Cities, bk.1, ch.4.

  • I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

    -John Donne
    c.1595  Elegies, no.12,'His Parting from Her'.

  • Riveris ran reid on spate with water broun, And burnis hurlis all their bankis doun.

    - Gavin Douglas
    c.1513  Eneados, bk.7, prologue.

  • It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless water.

    - (George) Norman Douglas
    Alone,'Mentone'.

  • There's Carol like a rolling car, And Martin like a flying bird, And Adam like the Lord's First Word, And Raymond like the Harvest Moon, And Peter like a piper's tune, And Alan like the flowing on Of water. And there's John, like John.

    - Eleanor Farjeon
      Then There Were Three,'Boys' Names'.

  •    The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Neither Far Out Nor in Deep'.

  • In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water.

    - Brendan Gill
      Quoted in Laura Rosen Top of the City: NewYork's hidden rooftop world (1990), foreword.

  • Yo no digo por eso que el te   no sea saludable†cuando duelen las tripas†pero al cabo no pasa de ser agua caliente; so  lo pod|a habernos venido de Inglaterra, que como all | son herejes, ni tendra  n vino, ni bueyes cebones. I'm not saying that tea is not healthy†when you have a stomach ache†but, all in all, it is only hot water; it could only come from the English, who, being heretics as they are, probably have no wine or good beer.

    - Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza
      Contigo pan y cebolla, act1.

  •    In all the events of life, we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, it is only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise.

    - David Hume
      A  Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.4, section 7.

  • Is not a Patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern ona manstruggling for life inthewater, and,whenhehas reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Letter to Lord Chesterfield,7 Feb. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water†Begob, ma'am, says Mrs.Cahill, God send you don't make them in the one pot.

    -James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
      Ulysses.

  • Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

    -John Keats
    Epitaph for himself. Quoted in Richard Monckton Milnes Life, Letters and Literary Remains of  John Keats (1848), vol.2.

  • Who hath desired the Sea?the sight of salt water unbounded The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed Hurricane blowing.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Sea and the Hills'.

  • Quand l'eau courbe un ba"  ton, ma raison la redresse. When water curves a stick, my reason straightens it out.

    -Jean de La Fontaine
      Fables, pt.7, no.18,'Un animal dans la lune'.

  • The widening river's slow presence, The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud, Gathers to the surprise of a large town: Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water, And residents from raw estates.

    - Philip Arthur Larkin
      Of Hull.'Here'.

  • Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice callingyet so warm, and yet so cold: 'I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

    - Henry Hertzberg Lawson
    'On the Night Train', collected in Colin Roderick (ed) Henry Lawson: Collected Verse (3 vols,1967^9).

  • The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Notebooks. Quoted in Vincent Cronin The Flowering of the Renaissance (1969).

  • Just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).

  • By the shore of Gitche Gumee By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 516 Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Song of Hiawatha, pt.3,'Hiawatha's Childhood'.

  • From the waterfall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Song of Hiawatha, pt.4,'Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis'.

  • Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it Macaulay down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till theyare fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

    -1st Baron
      'Milton', in the Edinburgh Review,  Aug.

  • So this is what our lives have been given to find, A language that can serve our purposes, A marvellous lucidity, a quality of fieryaery light, Flowing like clear water, flying like a bird Burning like a sunlit landscape.

    -Grieve
      'The Task'.

  • Something of glass about her, of dead water, Chills and holds us, Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair This despair of crystal brilliance.

    - (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
      Poems,'Circe'.

  •   And there he bounde the gyrdyll aboute the hyltis, and threw theswerde as farre intothewatirashemyght. And there cam an arme and an honde above the watir, and toke hit and cleyght hit, and shoke hit thryse and braundysshed, and than vanysshed with the swerde into the watir.

    - SirThomas   d.1471 Malory
    c.1470  Morte d'Arthur, bk.21, ch.5.

  • The trouble with women like me isthey can't keep their nerves out of the job in hand† I walk about with a mind full of ghosts of saucepans and primus stoves and 'Will there be enough to go round?' I loathe myself, today. I detest this woman who'superintends' you and rushes about, slamming doors and slopping waterall untidy with her blouse out and her nailsgrimed.

    -Beauchamp
      Letter to  John Middleton Murry, summer.

  • The aloe seemed to ride†like a ship with the oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon the lifted oars like water, and on the green wave glittered the dew.

    -Beauchamp
      Bliss and Other Stories,'Prelude'.

  • Water too pure breeds no fish.

    -Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung
    Quoted in Han Suyin Wind in the Tower (1974).

  • Virginity, albeit some highly prize it, Compared with marriage, had you tried them both, Differs as much as wine and water doth.

    - Christopher Marlowe
      Hero and Leander (published1598), pt.1, l.268^9.

  • Away with systems! Away with a corrupt world! Let us breathe the air of the Enchanted island.Golden lie the meadows; golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-stems. The sun's coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters. The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.

    - George Meredith
      The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, ch.19.

  • But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocea'  n, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charme'  d wave.

    -John Milton
      'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza 3.

  • There is no manner of doubt that a town surrounded by water is a very fine sight; but a town surrounded by land is much finer.Can there be any comparison in point of beauty, between the dull monotony of a watery surface, and the delightful variety of gardens, meadows, hills and woods ?

    -John Moore
    c.1780  A View of Society and Manners in Italy.

  • Shehad the rippling muscles of a panther, thesolidityof a water buffalo, and the lazy insolence of a shoe salesman.

    - S(ydney) J(oseph) Perelman
      Crazy Like a Fox,'Kitchen Bouquet'.

  • Some poems have form as a tree has form and some as water poured into a vase.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
    Quoted in Patricia C Willis (ed) The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1986).

  • If the ocean was pure mind and I was a wave, I would be in terror if Itried to distinguish myself fromthe water that produced me.What is a wave without water, and what is a mind without God?

    - Hugh Prather
      The Quiet Answer.

  • I like to make running water walk.

    - Sam(uel Taliaferro) Rayburn
    Quoted inValtonJ YoungThe Speaker's Agent (1956).

  • Information, freefrominterestorprejudice, freefromthe vanity of the writer or the influence of a Government, is as necessary to the human mind as pure air and water to the human body.

    -William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg
      Christian Science Monitor, 22 Sep.

  • Praise the sports of the land And water, each one The bath by the beach, or the yacht on the sea But of all the sweet pleasures Known under the sun; A good game of Croquet's the sweetest to me.

    -Thomas Mayne Reid
      Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.

    -Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams Rhys
      Voyage in the Dark, ch.2.

  • When Winter scourged the meadow and the hill And in the withered leafage worked his will, Then water shrank, and shuddered, and stood still, Then built himself a magic house of glass, Irised with memories of flowers and grass, Wherein to sit and watch the fury pass.

    - Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
      'Ice'.

  • A woman is like a tea bag; when she is in hot water she just gets stronger.

    - (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt
    Quoted by Hillary Rodham Clinton in theWall Street  Journal, 30 Sep1994.

  • In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter, Long ago.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      'Mid-Winter'.

  • I have sat by night beside a cold lake And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water, But the moon on this cloud sea is not human, And here is no shore, no intimacy, Only the start of space, the road to suns.

    - F(rancis) R(eginald) Scott
      'Trans Canada'.

  • There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'AVindication of Natural Diet'.

  • I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Cloud'.

  • I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of water's murmuring Along a shelving bankof turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightst in dream.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Question', stanza1.

  • The word, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. This one may be called 'value in use'; the other,'value in exchange'. The things which have the greatest value in usehave frequently little or novalue in exchange; and on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.

    - Adam Smith
    VALUE1776  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.4.

  • Here they have no time for the fine graces of poetry, unless it freely grows in deep compulsion, like water in the well, woven into the texture of the soil in a strong pattern.

    -A'Ghobhainn
      'Poem of Lewis'.

  •   He who drinks a tumbler of London Water has literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are men, Women and Children on the face of the globe.

    - Rev Sydney Smith
      Letter to Lady Grey,19 Nov.

  • 'I call it a criminal thing in any one's great-great- grandfather to rear up a preposterous troop of sons and plant them all out in his own country', Lady Knox said to me with apparent irrelevance.'I detest collaterals. Blood may be thicker than water, but it is also a great deal nastier.'

    -Martin Ross
      Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,'Philippa's Fox-Hunt'.

  • But when I plead, she bids me play my part, And when I weep, she says tears are but water: And when I sigh, she says I know the art, And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter.

    - Edmund Spenser
      Amoretti, sonnet18.

  • He may be more potent than any other man. The damnable iteration dayafter day of earnest conviction wears like the dropping of the water upon the stone.

    -WilliamThomas Stead
      Of the journalist.'Government by journalism', in the Contemporary Review, May. Collected in A Journalist on Journalism (1892).

  • 'In about half a mile you cross the river by an Irish bridge' 'Whatever is that?' 'It'sjust a bridge, but built under thewater instead ofover it.' 'Extremely sensible.'

    -John Innes Mackintosh Stewart
      A FamilyAffair.

  • The Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ, her Lord; She is his new creation By water and the word; From heaven he came and sought her To be his holy bride, With his own blood he bought her. And for her life he died.

    - Samuel John Stone
      Lyra fidelium.

  •    I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church, to preserve all that travel by land, or by water. 832

    -Jonathan Swift
      Polite Conversation, dialogue 2.

  • On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Laya great water, and the moon was full.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.179^80.

  • 'A chilli,'said Rebecca, gasping,'Oh, yes!' She thought a chilli wassomething cool, asitsname imported, and was served with some.'How fresh and green they look,'she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork.'Water, for Heaven's sake, water!'she cried.

    -William Makepeace Thackeray
    ^8  Vanity Fair, ch.3

  • Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself inThee, Let the water and the blood, From thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

    - Augustus Montague Toplady
      Hymn.

  • I just led them to the waterand they drank copiously.

    - Sam Torrance
      On his victorious European Ryder Cup team. In TheTimes, 28 Dec.

  •    That vessel in which the powers of steam are to be employed to work the engine, which is called the Cylinder in common fire engines, and which I call the SteamVessel, must, during the whole time the engine is at work, be kept ashot asthesteamthat entersit; first, by enclosing it ina case of wood, oranyother materialsthat transmit heat slowly; secondly, by surrounding it with steam or other heated bodies; and thirdly, by suffering neither water noranyother substance colder thansteam to enter and touch it during that time.

    -James Watt
      Specification of patent, 5 Jan, for a new method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines.

  • Fabulous the insects Stud the air Or walk on running water, Klee-drawn saints And bright as angels are.

    - Anne Wilkinson
      The HangmanTies the Holly,'InJune and Gentle Oven'.

  •    An open place it was, and overlooked, From high, the sullen water far beneath, On which a dull red image of the moon Lay bedded, changing oftentimes its form Like an uneasy snake.

    -William Wordsworth
    ^1805  The Prelude, bk.6, l.703^7 (published1850).

  • Then, the calm And dead still water lay upon my mind Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky, Never before so beautiful, sankdown Into my heart, and held me like a dream.

    -William Wordsworth
    ^1805  The Prelude, bk.2, l.70^4 (published1850).

  • Rose of all Roses,Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'The Rose of Battle', l.1^4. Collected in The Rose (1893).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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