Water, water, water . . . There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock. Of water to sand, insuring that wide, free, open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. — (Edward Abbey, Wilderness Reader)
Children of a culture born in a water-rich environment, we have never really learned how important water is to us. We understand it, but we do not respect it. — (William Ashworth, Nor Any Drop to Drink)
Water has become a highly precious resource. There are some places where a barrel of water costs more than a barrel of oil. — (Lloyd Axworthy, Foreign Minister of Canada, 1999 News Conference)
Of all our planet's activities—geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind)—no force is greater than the hydrologic cycle. — (Richard Bangs & Christian Kallen, River Gods)
The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man. — (Charles William Beebe, Log of the Sun)
I loved the rain as a child. I loved the sound of it on the leaves of trees and roofs and windowpanes and umbrellas and the feel of it on my face and bare legs. I loved the hiss of rubber tires on rainy streets and the flip-flop of windshield wipers. I loved the smell of wet grass and raincoats and shaggy coats of dogs. A rainy day was a special day for me in a sense that no other kind of day was—a day when the ordinariness of things was suspended with ragged skies drifting to the color of pearl and dark streets turning to dark rivers of reflected light and even people transformed somehow as the rain drew them closer by giving them something to think about together, to take common shelter from, to complain of and joke about in ways that made them more like friends than it seemed to me they were on ordinary sunny days. But more than anything, I think, I loved rain for the power it had to make indoors seem snugger and safer and a place to find refuge in from everything outdoors that was un-home, unsafe. I loved rain for making home seem home more deeply. — (Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey)
Estuaries are a happy land, rich in the continent itself, stirred by the forces of nature like the soup of a French chef; the home of myriad forms of life from bacteria and protozoan to grasses and mammals; the nursery, resting place, and refuge of countless. — (Stanley Cain, 1966 Speech)
Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land. So the little minutes, humble though they be, make the mighty ages of eternity. — (Julia Carney, Little Things)
If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving environmental quality. — (William C. Clark, April 1988 Speech in Racine, Wisconsin)
A man of wisdom delights in water. — (Confucius)
We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. — (Jacques Cousteau, Oceanographer)
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. — (Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars)
Only those people that have directly experienced the wetlands that line the shore . . . can appreciate their mystic qualities. The beauty of rising mists at dusk, the ebb and flow of the tides, the merging of fresh and salt waters. . . . — (Delaware Governor's Task Force on Marine and Coastal Affairs, "Delaware: Wetlands 1972")
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. — (Loren Eiseley, "Four Quartets," in The Immense Journey)
When the well's dry, we know the worth of water. — (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac 1746)
Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips. — (Jean Giraudoux, The Madwomen of Chaillot)
Everywhere water is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrops; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gems till the leaves all seem to turn to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the setting sun; or a white gauze around the midnight moon. — (John Ballantine Gough, A Glass of Water)
There's nothing . . . absolutely nothing . . . half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats. — (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (River Rat to Mole))
Between earth and earth's atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never a drop more, never a drop less. This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself. — (Linda Hogan)
What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wilderness?
Let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. — (Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Inversnaid")
Water is God's gift to living souls, to cleanse us, to purify us, to sustain us and to renew us. — (Jewish Bridal Celebration Ceremony)
If our salmon are not healthy, then our watersheds are not healthy—and if our watersheds our not healthy, then we have truly squandered our heritage and mortgaged our future. — (John Kitzhaber, Governor of Oregon, Speech at "A Tale of Two Rivers: National Conference of Trout Unlimited," August 16, 2000)
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free,
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.) (Sidney Lanier, "The Marshes of Glynn")
Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: What is soft is strong. — (Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (6th century B.C.), Tao Te Ching)
In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it. — (Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (6th century B.C.), Tao Te Ching)
Another Interpretation
Water flows humbly to the lowest level. Nothing is weaker than water, yet for overcoming what is hard and strong, nothing surpasses it. — (Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (6th century B.C.), Tao Te Ching)
Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes water and nobody knows what that is. — (D.H. Lawrence, Pansies)
Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children's lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land. — (Luna Leopold, Hydrologist)
Wetlands have a poor public image. . . . Yet they are among the earth's greatest natural assets . . . mankind's waterlogged wealth. — (Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth)
High-quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. — (Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, March 1, 1966 Speech)
All the water there will be, is. — (National Geographic (October 1993))
In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already passed through fishes, trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including people . . . Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption. — (Elliot Norse, Animal Extinctions)
Gutta cavat lapidem. (Dripping water hollows out a stone.) — (Ovid)
Water is the best of all things. — (Pindar (c. 522 - c. 438 B.C.), Olympian Odes)
For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports. — (Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity)
Water is the formless potential out of which creation emerged. It is the ocean of unconsciousness enveloping the islands of consciousness. Water bathes us at birth and again at death, and in between it washes away sin. It is by turns the elixir of life or the renewing rain or the devastating flood. — (Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center)
I have left almost to the last the magic of water, an element which owing to its changefulness of form and mood and color and to the vast range of its effects is ever the principal source of landscape beauty, and has like music a mysterious influence over the mind. — (Sir George Sitwell, On the Making of Gardens)
The estuary is the point where man, the sea—his immemorial ally and adversary—and the land meet and challenge each other. — (U.S. Department of the Interior, "National Estuarine Pollution Study," November 1969)
Filthy water cannot be washed. — (West African Proverb)
The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga. — (Representative Jim Wright of Texas, The Coming Water Famine)