Water

Water, water, everywhere; Nor any drop to drink. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Water is a common chemical substance, that is essential to all known forms of life. In typical usage water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has the solid state, ice, and gaseous state, water vapor. Water covers 71% of Earth's surface as well as below ground in aquifers and in the air as vapor, clouds, and precipitation.

Sourced

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. - Psalms 65:9

• All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
  • Ecclesiastes 1:7

• Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.
  • Psalms 65:9, Authorized Version

• Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruell maister.
  • William Bullein in Bulwarke of Defence against All Sicknesses (1562)

• Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
  • Bruce Lee as quoted in Bruce Lee : A Warrior's Journey (2000)

...a cruell maister. -William Bullein

• 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 in Moby-Dick (1851), Ch. 1, Loomings

• 天下莫柔弱於水。而攻堅強者、莫之能勝。以其無以易之。(Original: Chinese)
  • Translation: There is nothing softer and weaker than water,
    And yet there is nothing better for attacking hard and strong things.
    For this reason there is no substitute for it.
  • Laozi, Tao te Ching, Ch. 78.

• Water, water, every where,
  And all the boards did shrink;
  Water, water, every where,
  Nor any drop to drink.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
  • William Wordsworth, After the Storm

• 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.
  • Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 2, "The Science of Deduction"

• Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
  • W. H. Auden, First Things First

• Access to a secure, safe and sufficient source of fresh water is a fundamental requirement for the survival, well-being and socio-economic development of all humanity. Yet, we continue to act as if fresh water were a perpetually abundant resource. It is not.
  • Kofi Annan, Is the World Running Out of Water?, Awake! magazine, June 22, 2001.

• The challenge of securing safe and plentiful water for all is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today. . . . Too often, where we need water we find guns.
  • Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General. Awake! magazine, November 8, 2008; Watching the World.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 862-63.

• Still waters run no mills.
  • Quoted by Aglionby, Life of Bickerstaff, p. 5.

• Pure water is the best of gifts that man to man can bring,
  But who am I that I should have the best of anything?
  Let princes revel at the pump, let peers with ponds make free,
  Whisky, or wine, or even beer is good enough for me.
  • Anon. In the Spectator, July 31, 1920. Attributed to Hon. G. W. E. Russell, also to Lord Neaves. Several versions given in Notes and Queries, Oct. 23, 1897.

• Pouring oil on troubled water.
  • Adam Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book III, Chapter XV, p. 142. (Hussey's Ed.) Bede says he received the account from Cynemund, who heard it from Utta. Found also in St. Basil, Hexæm. Hom., II. Erasmus, Adagia. Plautus, Pœnulus, V, IV. 66.

• A cup of cold Adam from the next purling stream.
  • Tom Brown, Works, Volume IV, p. 11.

• The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section III. Memb. 4. Subsect. 1.

• 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 (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 84.

• Water, water, everywhere,
  And all the boards did shrink;
  Water, water, everywhere,
  Nor any drop to drink.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), Part II, Stanza 9.

• 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.

• Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.
  • Genesis. XLIX. 4.

• Water its living strength first shows,
  When obstacles its course oppose.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, God, Soul, and World, Rhymed Distichs.

• And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XI, line 722. Pope's translation.

• 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 rising world of waters dark and deep.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 11.

• I'm very fond of water:
  It ever must delight
  Each mother's son and daughter,—
  When qualified aright.
  • Charles Neaves, I'm very fond of Water.

• Caducis
  Percussu crebro saxa cavantur aquis.
  • Stones are hollowed out by the constant dropping of water.
  • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, II. 7. 39.

• Est in aqua dulci non invidiosa voluptas.
  • There is no small pleasure in sweet water.
  • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, II. 7. 73.

• Miserum est opus,
  Igitur demum fodere puteum, ubi sitis fauces tedet.
  • It is wretched business to be digging a well just as thirst is mastering you.
  • Plautus, Mostellaria, II. 1. 32.

• A Rechabite poor Will must live,
  And drink of Adam's ale.
  • Matthew Prior, The Wandering Pilgrim.

• The noise of many waters.
  • Psalms. XCIII. 4.

• As water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.
  • II Samuel, XIV. 14.

• Honest water, which ne'er left man in the mire.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 2, line 59.

• More water glideth by the mill
  Than wots the miller of.
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (c. 1584-1590), Act II, scene 1, line 85.

• '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.

• And so never ending,
  But always descending.
  • Robert Southey, The Cataract of Lodore.

• "How does the Water
  Come down at Lodore?"
  • Robert Southey, The Cataract of Lodore.

• 'Tis a little thing
  To give a cup of water: yet its draught
  Of cool refreshment, drain'd by feverish lips,
  May give a thrill of pleasure to the frame
  More exquisite than when nectarian juice
  Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.
  • Thomas Noon Talfourd, Sonnet III.

• How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
  When fond recollection presents them to view.
  * * * * * *
  The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
  The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well.
  • Samuel Woodworth, The Old Oaken Bucket.

• How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
  As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips!
  Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
  The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.
  • Samuel Woodworth, The Old Oaken Bucket.

Unsourced

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

• It may be belived that many are ignorant of the taste of water.
  • -Westminster- Review

• Somewhere, behind space and time,
  Is wetter water, slimier slime.
  • Rupert Brooke

• His answer trickled through my head
  Like water through a sieve.
  • Lewis Carroll

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

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

• 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 stream is an exact replica of a great river.
  • Roderick Haig-Brown

• Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
  • African Proverb

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

See also

• Air
• Earth
• Fire