Water, Rain, Fountains, Pools, Ditches, Rivers: Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Quotations (original) (raw)

Water

Rain, Fountains, Dew, Pools, Ponds, Storm, Thunderstorm Rivers, Streams, Lakes, Wells, Ditches, Monsoon, Hurricane

Compiled by
Michael P. Garofalo
Green Way Research, Valley Spirit Center, Red Bluff, California

Seeing Light Taste Months and Seasons Earth Spirit

Five Elements Weather Gardening Cloud Hands Blog Process Philosophy

"It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks." - Edith Wharton, Italian Villas and Their Gardens

"If gardeners will forget a little the phrase, "watering the plants" and think of watering as a matter of "watering the earth" under the plants, keeping up its moisture content and gauging its need, the garden will get on very well.
- Henry Beston, Herbs and the Earth, 1935

"The good rain, like the bad preacher, does not know when to leave off."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We're all downstream."
- Jim and Margaret Drescher

"Arthur Guyton 's Textbook of Medical Physiology states that "the total amount of water in a man of average weight (70 kilograms) is approximately 40 litres, averaging 57 percent of his total body weight. In a newborn infant, this may be as high as 79 percent of the body weight, but it progressively decreases from birth to old age, most of the decrease occurring during the first 10 years of life. Also, obesity decreases the percentage of water in the body, sometimes to as low as 45 percent". These figures are statistical averages, so are illustrative, and like all biostatistics, will vary with things like type of population, age and number of people sampled, and methodology. So there is not, and cannot be, a figure that is exactly the same for all people, for this or any other physiological measure. For example, Jackson's (1985) Anatomy & Physiology for Nurses gives a figure of 60% for the proportion of body-weight attributable to water, which approximates Guyton's 57%."
- Body Water - Wikipedia

"Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody." - Mark Twain

"Water is the only drink for a wise man." - Henry David Thoreau

"Our bodies are molded rivers." - Novalis

"The underlying attraction of the movement of water and sand is biological. If we look more deeply we can see it as the basis of an abstract idea linking ourselves with the limitless mechanics of the universe." - Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe

"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 A. Norse, Animal Extinctions

"Water, the Hub of Life. Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium. Water is the most extraordinary substance! Practically all its properties are anomalous, which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery. Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

"The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?" - Samuel T. Coleridge, 1772-1834, Cologne

"In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty." - Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law

"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, 1982

"Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans."
- Jacques Yves Costeau

"The existence of the five elements can also be found in India, predating their use in Greece. The pancha mahabhuta, or "five great elements", ofHinduismare kshiti or bhūmi (earth),apor jala (water),tejas or agni (fire),marut or_pavan_ (airor wind), vyom or shunya or akash (aetherorvoid). Hindus believe that all of creation, including the human body, is made up of these five essential elements and that upon death, the human body dissolves into these five elements of nature, thereby balancing the cycle of nature. According to one of the principal texts of Hindu philosophy, the Tattwa Kaumudi authored byVacaspati in the 9th century A.D., theCreator used akasha (ether), the most "subtle" element, to create the other four traditional elements; each element created is in turn used to create the next element, each less subtle than the last. The five elements are associated with the five senses, and act as the gross medium for the experience of sensations. The basest element, earth, created using all the other elements, can be perceived by all five senses - hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. The next higher element, water, has no odor but can be heard, felt, seen and tasted. Next comes fire, which can be heard, felt and seen. Air can be heard and felt. "Akasha" (ether) is the medium of sound but is inaccessible to all other senses."
- Classical Five Elements - Wikipedia

"Don't empty the water jar until the rain falls." - Philippine proverb

"When time comes for us to again rejoin the infinite stream of water flowing to and from the great timeless ocean, our little droplet of soulful water will once again flow with the endless stream."
- William E. Marks, The Holy Order Of Water

"To a gardener there is nothing more exasperating than a hose that just isn't long enough." - Cecil Roberts

"Rain scatters plum petals;
Weeping stains the earth.
One can only take shelter
And wait for clearing."
- Deng Ming Dao

"If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water." - Loren Eisley

"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 protozoans to grasses and mammals; the nursery, resting place, and refuge of countless things."

• Stanely A. Cain

"How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and the heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain!" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rain in Summer

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life." - John Updike

"Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. 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 forever."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

"The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal ... Siddhartha was now listening intently...to this song of a thousand voices ... then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om -- Perfection ... From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny." - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

"Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure."
- St. Francis of Assisi

"Water is the driver of Nature." - Leonardo da Vinci

"We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind,--and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Before the Rain

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
- Susan Ertz

"By mass, humancells consist of 65�90% water (H2O). Oxygen therefore contributes a majority of ahuman body's mass. Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of the six elements oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. About 0.85% is composed of only five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All are necessary to life. The remaining elements aretrace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought to be necessary for life, or play an active role in health (e.g., fluorine, which hardens dental enamel but seems to have no other function). The average 70 kgadult human body contains approximately 6.7 x 1027 atoms and is "composed of" 60chemical elements. In this sense, "composed of" means that a trace of the element has been identified in the body. However, at the finest resolution, most objects on Earth (including the human body) contain measureable contaminating amounts of all of the 88 chemical elements which are detectable in nearly any soil on Earth."
- Composition of the Human Body - Wikipedia

"We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it." - Jeladuddin Rumi (1207-1273)

"Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food." - Henry Ward Beecher

"In the Western United States,water flows uphill to money." - Glen Sanders

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

"You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus of Ephesus

"By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people - about half the world's populations - will live in areas without enough
water for agriculture, industry, and human needs... Worldwide, water quality conditions appear to have
degraded in almost all regions with intensive agriculture and in large urban and industrial areas."
- World Resources Institute, October 2000

A little rain each day will fill the rivers to overflowing.
- Proverb from Liberia

If you gave me several million years, there would be nothing that did not grow in beauty if it were surrounded by water. - Jan Erik Vold, What All The World Knows

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.

• Laura Gilpin

Praise the sea; on shore remain. - John Florio

"When you look at that nature world it becomes an icon, it becomes a holy picture that speaks of the origins of the world. Almost every mythology sees the origins of life coming out of water. And, curiously, that's true. It's amusing that the origin of life out of water is in myths and then again, finally, in science, we find the same thing. It's exactly so." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p. 10

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives. - American Indian Saying

Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River. - Basho

The trees reflected in the river -- they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane. - Robert Frost

Advice to those about to build a Water-garden - DON'T. Not that the Water-garden
is not a joy and a glory; but that it is cruelly hard to keep in order and control unless
you are a master of millions and of broad ample acres of pool and pond. Water,
like fire, is a good servant, perhaps, but is painfully liable to develop into a master.
- R. J. Farrer, Alpines and Bog Plants, 1908

Filthy water cannot be washed. - African proverb

Some people are making such thorough plans
for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine.
- William Feather

How often it is that a garden, beautiful though it be, will seem sad and dreary and lacking in one of its most gracious features, if it has no water. - Pierre Husson

Some think that even the ancients who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts of the Gods, had a similar view of nature; for they made the Oceanus and Tethys the parents of creation, and described the oath of the Gods as being by water, to which they give the name of Styx; for what is oldest is most honourable, and the most honourable thing is that by which one swears Mary Austin, Land of Little Rain

Innumerable as the stars of night, Or stars of morning, dewdrops which the sun Impearls on every leaf and every flower. - John Milton

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your headwith silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. - Langston Hughes, April Rain Song, 1902 - 1967

Everywhere water is a thing of beauty gleaming in the dewdrop, singing in the summer rain. - John Ballantine Gough

Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water. - Sweedish proverb

I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness. - Adeline Knapp

Like swift water, an active mind never stagnates.

Water sustains all. - Thales of Miletus, 600 B.C.

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absense of prayers. - Steve Allen

If you saw what the river carried, you would never drink the water.
- Jamaican proverb

Keeping in touch with childhood memories keeps us believing in life’s simplest pleasures like a rainy afternoon, a swingset, and a giant puddle to play in. - Chrissy Ogden

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. - Benjamin Franklin

Every peasant is proud of the pond in his village because from it he measures the sea. - Russian proverb

Even if you sit at the bottom of the stream, you cannot be a fish.

If there is a continual going to the well, one day there will be a smashing of the pitcher.

The stone in the water knows nothing of the hill which lies parched in the sun.

- African Proverbs

Till taught by pain, Men really know not what good water's worth; If you had been in Turkey or in Spain, Or with a famish'd boat's-crew had your berth, Or in the desert heard the camel's bell, You'd wish yourself where Truth is--in a well. - Lord Byron, Don Juan

Ancient traditions have long associated holy wells and springs as very special places
of the Goddess or anima mundi: symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with
birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of
fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life. The dreaming sites, as they are called,
have also been associated with visions, healing, and other paranormal experiences. In
ancient Greece, for example, there were more than three-hundred medical centers
placed at water sources, where patients experienced healing.
- Christopher and Tricia McDowell, The Sanctuary Garden, 1998, p. 62

The Church and the Healing Waters of the Grotto of the Blessed Lady of Lourdes, in France, attract five million visitors each year.

Human beings are made up mostly of water, in roughly the same percentage as water is to the surface of the earth. Our tissues and membranes, our brains and hearts, our sweat and tears--all reflect the same recipe for life, in which efficient use is made of those ingredients available on the surface of the earth. We are 23 percent carbon, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, with tiny amounts of roughly three dozen other elements. But above all we are oxygen (61 percent) and hydrogen (10 percent), fused together in the unique molecular combination known as water, which makes up 71 percent of the human body. - Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

Passions are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb. - Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552 - 1618

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers. - Lucretius, 99 - 55 B.C.

Water is a good servant, but it is a cruel master. - John Bullein, 1562

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself - for it is from the soil, both from its depth and from its surface, that a river has its beginning. - Laura Gilpin

'Tis a little thing To give a cup of water; yet its draught Of cool refreshment, drain'd by fever'd lips, May give a shock of pleasure to the frame More exquisite than when nectarean juice Renews the life of joy in happiest hours. - Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, Ion

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, 1792 - 1822

The Clouds consign their treasures to the fields; And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world. - James Thomson, Seasons--Spring

By means of water, we give life to everything. - Koran, 21:30

The bare earth, plantless, waterless, is an immense puzzle. In the forests or beside rivers everything speaks to humans. The desert does not speak. I could not comprehend its tongue; its silence.... - Pablo Neruda

"Now let�s take a closer look at the importance of water in our own bodies. As babies we are approximately 75 to 80% water and as we grow older this percentage decreases until the percentage is reduced to approximately 60 to 65% for men and 50 to 60% for women. The human brain is about 85% water and our bones are between 10 to 15% water. The chemical structure of water H2O and both the hydrogen and oxygen have great importance as life giving properties and a preserving force to our systems. Women have a higher percentage of adipose tissue than men, giving them a lower percentage of water. The ability of water to disassemble and rearrange other molecules is essential to the chemistry of life. It does this by forming weak bonds with the other molecules. This is often why we refer to water as the universal solvent. Water is a perfect conductor of electricity and this becomes important in the day to day operation of our bodies. For example, the electrical potential is shared between the brain neurons through electrochemical transmitters. This electrical potential of brain chemistry must be present for any of our "thoughts" to take place." - Water in the Body

Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.

• Isaac Asimov

For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs." - Sir Francis Bacon, Of Gardens, 1625

O Lord,
grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning,
but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on
campion, alyssum, heliaanthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought
loving plants - I will write their names on a paper if you like - and grant that the sun may shine the whole day
long, but not everywhere (not for instance, on spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not
to much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew,
and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven.
Amen.
- Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, 1929

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was
almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used
to do when it was younger, but moved slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and
it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
- Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

A pool is the eye of the garden in whose candid depths is mirrored its advancing grace. - Lousie Bebe Wilder

Falling on the dusty path-- summer rain. - Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

Genius is a bend in the creek where bright water has gathered, and which mirrors the trees, the sky and the banks. It just does that because it is there and the scenery is there. Talent is a fine mirror with a silver frame, with the name of the owner engraved on the back. - Edgar Lee Masters

All the water that will ever be is right now. - National Geographic

Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure. - Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun

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

Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. Swedish Proverb

God made rainy days, so gardeners could get the housework done. - Author Unknown

Soften my heart, O God of living waters, that the shower of Scripture I am about to read may enrich the soil of my soul.

Rain down your wisdom in sacred streams to carry me like an upturned leaf through the currents of this gray day. Amen.

- Edward Hays, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim

Before enlightenment - chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood and carry water. - Zen saying

In 1847, two years before the greedy rush for gold began in California, the Mormons quietly began irrigating Utah's Salt Lake Valley. In a sense, they were the first American irrigators of any significance. And their knowledge about the art of applying water to land has spread throughout the world. - Stu Campbell, The Home Water Supply, 1983

The watering of a garden requires as much judgement as the seasoning of a soup. - Helena Rutherford Ely

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 came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day. - Theodore Roethke, The Waking, 1948

The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover.
The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both
thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and
brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals,
I the great Aphrodite ....
- Aeschylus, The Danaides, c 500 B.C.

Then Heaven, the Father Almighty, comes down in fruitful showers into the lap of his joyous spouse, and his might, with her mighty frame commingling, nurtures all growths. - Virgil, Georgics

In Scandinavian mythology, for example, the fountain of Mimir, source of hidden wisdom, lay under the roots of the great world tree and in Islamic culture fountains are found referred to in the Koran, in the garden called Paradise. In the Bible the passage: "It is done, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely," reflects the importance that fountains symbolized to the writers.
- Bryan R. Hirst, Fountains

All feelings, both positive and unpleasant, come out of the same faucet. To turn down the faucet on pain is to slow the flow of pleasant feelings as well. - Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks

No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see. - Taoist proverb

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Of the first philosophers, then, most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved�.this they say is the element and this is the principle of things�. yet they do not all agree as to the number and the nature of these principle is water�. - Mary Austin, Land of Little Rain

The rain is plentious but, by God's decree, Only a third is meant for you and me; Two-thirds are taken by the growing things Or vanish Heavenward on vapour's wings: Nor does it mathematically fall With social equity on one and all. The population's habit is to grow In every region where the water's low: Nature is blamed for failings that are Man's, And well-run rivers have to change their plans.

- Sir Alan Herbert, Water

But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. - William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

It ain't no use to grumble and complain; It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain, Why, rain's my choice. - James Whitcomb Riley, Rain, 1849 - 1916

Happy in all that ragged, loose collapse of water, the fountain, its effortless descent and flatteries of spray...
- Richard Wilbur

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. - Author Unknown

We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it... In short, we need a water ethic--a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand. - Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity

The river moves from land to water to land, in and out of organisms, reminding us what native peoples have never forgotten: that you cannot separate the land from the water, or the people from the land. - Lynn Noel, Voyages: Canada's Heritage Rivers

According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead. - Charles Richter

Constant dripping hollows out a stone. - Lucretius

For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light do we see light.
- Psalms 36:9

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters... - Psalm 23:1-2

It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right. - Lyall Watson, Supernature

Sky, Clouds, Wind, Air - Quotes for Gardeners

A little rain will fill The lily's cup which hardly moistens the field. - Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia

The physical rhythm of life established through sensitivity to qualitative time mirrors the ebb and flow of water. Maintaining rhythm is dependent on our daily decisions concerning vocation, recreation and work. Using the image of water roots Watershed Spirituality in diversity and pluralism. Life in a "variety of forms" implies an emphasis on inter-religious appreciation and the universalist vision. - Arthur Paul Patterson, Watershed Spirituality

When you drink the water, remember the spring. - Chinese proverb

A garden locked, a fountain sealed... a garden fountain, a well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon.
- Song of Solomon 4:12

To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose. - Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader

Freedom alone is not enough without light to read at night, without time or access to water to irrigate your farm, without the ability to catch fish to feed your family. - Nelson Mandela

Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw
nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring
died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned
its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow
of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and
bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.
- Peter Mayle
[Reminds one of the 1999 drought conditions in the U.S.A.]

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

I hate water - fish fuck in it.
- W.C. Fields

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. - Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain; What a wonderful feeling, I'm happy again. - Arthur Freed

What runs but never gets tired? Water

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

"Your body requires a certain amount of water to function properly. When your water-percentage gets out of whack, and you have too much or too little water in your system, you may experience negative effects. To maintain a healthy water-percentage, drink fluids regularly and avoid diuretics such as caffeine.

Water plays an essential role in almost all bodily functions. Water acts to transport nutrients and gases throughout the body, and also enables cellular reactions to take place. Water carries waste products out of your body in the form of urine and feces, helps lubricate your joints, and cushions your organs. Water helps you maintain a stable body temperature during exercise and environmental heat stress. Water is so essential to human life that you can expect to live only a few days without it.

Normal and healthy water weight in the human body varies based on age, gender body composition. According to the book "Exercise Physiology," water constitutes 65 percent to 75 percent of muscle and only 10 percent of fat. So, the more muscle mass you have, the higher the percentage of water weight you'll have. The book "Sports Nutrition" indicates that water accounts for roughly 50 percent to 60 percent of most people's body weight percentage. Because women usually have a higher body fat percentage than men, they tend to have a lower overall percentage of water weight.

Your body constantly experiences fluid turnover. You excrete water throughout the day that has to be replaced in order to maintain a healthy level of hydration. According to "Sports Nutrition," a sedentary adult tends to lose roughly 2,200 mL of water each day. The body loses water through respiration, sweat, feces and urine. To offset the water loss, you need to eat and drink throughout the day. You can replace the 2,200 mL of water loss through drinking 1,200 mL of fluids, consuming 700 mL of water content in food, and gaining 300 mL of water metabolically through the oxidation of carbohydrates and fats for fuel. Keep in mind that when you exercise, you lose more water through sweat and respiration that has to be replaced.

Dehydration, or a negative fluid balance, can impair general performance and can even be life-threatening. According to MayoClinic.com, dehydration can cause dry mouth, fatigue, headache and muscle weakness. If dehydration becomes severe, symptoms can include a lack of sweat or urine, rapid heartbeat, fever and even unconsciousness. According to the book "Sports Nutrition," during exercise, a dehydration level as small as 2 percent can impair exercise performance, and a 5 percent fluid loss can decrease exercise capacity by 30 percent."
- Water as a Percentage of Human Body Weight

Pity! The southerly trees have shed their leaves. Nobody comes to appreciate the mountain's beauty. Tomorrow I too will float away. My reflection gone from cool streams. - Cheng Man-ch'ing, 1933
Cheng Man-ch'ing: Master of Five Excellences. Translation and commentary by Mark Hennessy, 1995.
The five excellences include: calligraphy, painting, poetry, medicine, and t'ai chi chuan.

I have left almost to the last the magic of water, an element which owing to its changefulness of form and mood and colour 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, 1909

Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done, Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun? - Rose Fyleman

Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a Spring brook,
till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a strong kinship with the waters of this world.
- Hal Borland

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

Water from a fountain quenches the excessive heat which would destroy this life. Thus water can be called the only everlasting source of continuous being.
- Nicola Salvi, 1732

In the spring rain, The pond and the river Have become one. - Buson

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

Weather Lore and Cliches

Water ... which though not absolutely necessary to a beautiful composition, yet occurs
so often, and is so capital a feature, that is is always regretted when wanting; and no large
place can be supposed, a little spot can hardly be imagined in which it may not be
agreeable; it accommodates itself to every situation; is the most interesting object in a
landscape, and the happiest circumstance in a retired recess; captivates the eye at a
distance; invites approach, and is delightful when near; it refreshes an open exposure;
it animates a shade; cheers the dreariness of a waste, and enriches the most crowded view;
in form, in style, and in extent, may be made equal to the greatest compositions, or
adapted to the least; it may spread in a calm expanse to sooth the tranquillity of a
peaceful scene; or hurrying along a devious course, add splendor to a gay, and
extravagance to a romantic situation.
- Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening, 1770

Flowing water never goes bad;
our doorways never gather termites.
- Chinese Proverbs

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

Expect poison from the standing water.
- William Blake

I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water . . . has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river. - Roderick Haig-Brown

How it pours, pours, pours, In a never-ending sheet! How it drives beneath the doors! How it soaks the passer's feet! How it rattles on the shutter! How it rumples up the lawn! How 'twill sigh, and moan, and mutter, From darkness until dawn. - Rossiter Johnson, Rhyme of the Rain

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'. - Michael McClary

The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. - Charles Kuralt

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god–sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities--ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonored, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting. - T. S. Eliot, Dry Salvages

leafless trees dripping - autumn rain - Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

To trace the history of a river, or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also
to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.
In both we constantly seek and stumble on divinity, which, like the cornice feeding
the lake and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself
over and over again.
- Gretel Ehrlich, Sisters of the Earth

****| Months and Seasons Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Verses, Lore, Myths, Holidays Celebrations, Folklore, Reading, Links, Quotations Information, Weather, Gardening Chores Compiled by Mike Garofalo | | | |** | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Winter | Spring | Summer | Fall | | January | April | July | October | | February | May | August | November | | March | June | September | December |

When oxygen and hydrogen find one another, their joining produces fiery passion.
Out of this fire, water is born. Quaint Victorian chemistry gives us an image of one
oxygen and two hydrogen atoms in a fixed molecule that bounces around from
place to place. The reality of water is not so orderly. The hydrogen atoms are not
owned by any particular oxygen atom. Water is a substance very much in love
with itself, and the atoms connect in webs and clusters where oxygen shares
around the hydrogen atoms freely, a fluid situation indeed.
- Ian D. Anderson, Ian Lurking Bear

Water is the basis of life and the blue arteries of the earth! Everything in the non-marine environment depends on freshwater to survive. - -Sandra Postel

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air.

It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow. - Wallace Stevens, The Man With the Blue Guitar

We're all downstream.

The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers, The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water. What is water, That pours silver, And can hold the sky? - Hilda Conkling, Water

Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations.
It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with
great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in
usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body
but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit.
- John of Damascus

Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a Spring brook till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a strong kinship with the waters of this world. - Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Fountains indicate and signal well-being to all. Not only that, they share their Karmic energy with all who see, hear, smell, taste and touch them. They are, and always have been, necessary for permanent settlements. We use them when ever we turn on a tap. Fountains have come to symbolize the generosity of a god, an institution or a person. They indicate abundance and ingenuity. In every culture they play a part in the mythology of life. - Bryan R. Hirst, Fountains

Nearly 97% of the world's water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers. Only 1% can be used for all agricultural, residential, manufacturing, community and personal needs. - Drinking Water Week

Water is H20, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes water and nobody knows what that is. - D. H. Lawrence

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. - Steven Wright

To serve the cause of water adequately... We must get to know it in its true being. And how do we do this? Why, by treating it in the very way exemplified by its own behavior; that is, whenever we encounter it, we wash the tablet of our souls clean of all other impressions in order to allow the being of water to make its imprint on us. - Theodor Schwenk, Water: The Element of Life

What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

In the time that I have been acquainted with this region I have become increasingly
aware of it as a testament of water, the origin and guide of its contours and gradients
and of all the lives - the plants and small creatures, and the culture - that evolved here.
That was always here to be seen, of course, and the recognition has forced itself,
in one form or other, upon people in every part of the world who have been directly
involved with the growing of living things. The gardener who ignores it is soon
left with no garden.
- W. S. Merwin, A Shape of Water, 1997

Next to blood relationships, come water relationships. - Stanley Crawford, Mayordomo

For after all the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Rain does not fall on one roof alone.
- Proverb from Cameroon

Always leave extra time for unraveling the hose. The Thirst is so great that many visualize Heaven as being in the Midst of Clouds. The fountains, pools and streams in Shangri-La are ever full and never polluted. Remember that the River of Forgetfulness flows by the Elysian Fields. Drip, drip, drip ... your way to garden stewardship. The end of the garden is at the end of the hose. Gardens dream about water. Water the soil not the plants. Every gallon must work! - Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions: The Quips and Maxims of a Gardener

Water is the mother of the vine, The nurse and fountain of fecundity, The adorner and refresher of the world. - Charles Mackay, The Dionysia

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy; neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. - John W. Gardner

Trees - Quotes for Gardeners

To the waters, and the wild, with a Faerie, hand in hand, for the world is more full of weeping ... than you can understand. - W.B. Yeats

A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it wise and to be praised, But wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still waters. - William Cowper, The Task

To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. - Gretel Ehrlich

Even stones under mountain waterfalls compose odes to plum blossoms. - Onitsura

When you hear the splash Of the water drops that fall Into the stone bowl You will feel that all the dust Of your mind is washed away. - Sen-No-Rikyu

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, Tao Te Ching

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

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; Behind the clouds the sun is shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, An April Day

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

Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. - Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Brook

You open, land, your mouth full of water, your bo

I am an optimist, but I'm an optimist who carries a raincoat. - Harold Wilson

Do not bathe if there is no water. - Shan proverb

It is water, in every form and at every scale, that saturates the mind. All the water that will ever be is, right now. - National Geographic, October 1993

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. - Jacques Cousteau

Life processes take place in an aqueous medium. All organisms are composed mostly of water, whether they dwell in the oceans, lakes, and rivers, or on the land. Because the physical and chemical properties of water are well suited to the requirements of life, it is no accident that life is a water-based phenomenon. - Robert E. Ricklefs, Ecology

Any river is really the summation of the whole valley. To think of it as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part. - Hal Borland, This Hill, This Valley

For keenest enjoyment, I visit when the dew is on them, or in cloudy weather, or when the rain is falling: and I must be alone or with someone who cares for them as I do. - David Fairchild

The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? - Samuel T. Coleridge, 1772-1834, Cologne

Rivers are magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering and subconscious dreams, thrills, fears. People stare into the moving water, captivated, as they are when gazing into a fire. What is it that draws and holds us? The rivers' reflections of our lives and experiences are endless . . . - Tim Palmer, Lifelines

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. - Saint Augustine

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. -Jim Wright

The quality of water and the quality of life in all its infinite forms are critical parts of the overall, ongoing health of this planet of ours, not just here in the Amazon, but everywhere... The hardest part of any big project is to begin. We have begun. We are underway. W e have a passion. We want to make a difference. - Peter Blake

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind in never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day

"In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty." - Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law

If all the world's water were fit into a gallon jug, the fresh water available for us to use would equal only about one tablespoon.

A corn field of one acre gives off 4,000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.

It takes about 6 gallons of water to grow a single serving of lettuce.

More than 2,600 gallons is required to produce a single serving of steak. - Water Facts

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. - Jacques Cousteau

The sound of the water says what I think. - Chuang Tzu

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling. - Lucretius

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

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed- It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. - William Shakespeare

You don't drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there. - Edwin Cole

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

Tis rushing now adown the spout, And gushing out below, Half frantic in its joyousness, And wild in eager flow. The earth is dried and parched with heat, And it hath long'd to be Released from out the selfish cloud, To cool the thirsty tree. - Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Water

Living creatures are nourished by food, and food is nourished by rain; rain itself is the water of life, which comes from selfless worship and service. - Bhagavad Gita

It is not raining to me, It's raining daffodils; In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on distant hills. - Robert Loveman, April Rain

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

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon, that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields, and we ask that they teach us and show us the way. - Chinook Indian Blessing

Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights. - The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights

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

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

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. 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

The Spirit of Gardening Website Over 3,800 Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Quips, One-Liners, Clich�s, Quotes, and Insights Arranged by Over 250 Topics Over 15 Megabytes of Text Over 21 Million Webpages (excluding graphics) Served to Readers Around the World From January 1, 1999 through March 1, 2011 This webpage has been online since January 1999 Compiled by Mike Garofalo from Red Bluff, California E-Mail

Last Updated: July 7, 2012

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