Water Quotes and Sayings

Quotes and Water

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

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, www.hawaiianlife.com

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

"Take your shoes off," purred the ocean waves. ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)