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Water

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Stones are hollowed out by the constant dropping of water. ~ Ovid

Water (chemical formula: H2O) 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, and exists as snow, fog, dew and cloud. Liquid water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. Water is use for washing clothes, bathing, brushing teeth, etc.

Quotes

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Access to a secure, safe and sufficient source of fresh drinking 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
Sorted alphabetically by author or source
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. ~ W. H. Auden
Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruel master. ~ William Bullein
Water, water, everywhere; Nor any drop to drink. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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
Waterfalls wouldn't sound so melodious if there were no rocks in their way. ~Rishabh Guatam
  • Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
  • 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, UN Secretary-General, as quoted in Is the World Running Out of Water?, Awake! magazine, (22 June 2001)
  • Thales asserted Water to be the principle of things. For he saw that matter was principally dispensed in moisture, and moisture in water; and it seemed proper to make that the principle of things, in which the virtues and powers of beings, and especially the elements of their generations and restorations, were chiefly found. He saw that the breeding of animals is in moisture ; that the seeds and kernels of plants (as long as they are productive and fresh), are likewise soft and tender; that metals also melt and become fluid, and are as it were concrete juices of the earth, or rather a kind of mineral waters; that the earth itself is fertilised and revived by showers or irrigation, and that earth and mud seem nothing else than the lees and sediment of water; that air most plainly is but the exhalation and expansion of water; nay, that even fire itself cannot be lighted, nor kept in and fed, except with moisture and by means of moisture. He saw, too, that the fatness which belongs to moisture, and which is the support and life of flame and fire, seems a kind of ripeness and concoction of the water.
    • Francis Bacon, De Principiis Atque Originibus as translated in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (1905) edited by John M. Robertson
  • 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, as quoted in "Watching the World", in Awake! magazine (8 November 2008)
  • Perfect water - the dark wind braids the waves.
    The crazed birds raid the trees. is this our destiny?
    To join our hands at sea - and slowly sink, and slowly think:
    This is perfect water, passing over me.
  • Rahula, develop meditation that is like water. ... Just as people wash clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus, and blood in water, and the water is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted because of that, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like water.
    • Gautama Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya, B. Nanamoli and B. Bodhi, trans. (1995), Sutta 62, verse 14, p. 530
  • 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.
  • The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they are not there, science cannot create them. If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
    • Rachel Carson, in her acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952); also in Lost Woods : The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91
  • Our streams are fouled with an incredible assortment of wastes-domestic, chemical, radioactive, so that our planet, though dominated by seas that envelop three-fourths of its surface, is rapidly becoming a thirsty world.
    • Rachel Carson Speech at Scripps College (June 1962) In Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment
  • Jack Harkness: There you go! I can taste it! Oestrogen. Definitely oestrogen. Take the pill, flush it away, it enters the water cycle. Feminizes the fish. Goes all the way up into the sky then falls all the way back down onto me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again.
  • There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
  • Only here in this part of the universe, on Earth, is there known to be a place naturally blessed with abundant, liquid water. Not only is this the singular place with an ocean of salt water, but even more significant, it is an ocean that is filled with life that in turn, during some four billion years, has shaped the basic rocks and water of the planet into a strikingly different kind of place, a place unlike any known to exist anywhere else.
    • Sylvia Earle The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One (2009)
  • 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 recognised as a frontier;
    Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
    Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. (I)
  • [Water] is one of the most investigated of all chemicals, but it is still the least understood ... nothing is as complex in its behaviour.
  • H2O should be a gas, . . . but it is a liquid. Moreover, when it freezes . . . , its solid form, ice, floats instead of sinking.
  • [W]ith Thales... Aristotle ascribes the statement: "Water is the material cause of all things." This... expresses, as Nietzsche... pointed out, three fundamental ideas of philosophy. First, ...the material cause of all things; second, ...that this ...be answered in conformity with reason, without ...myths or mysticism; third, ...that ...it must be possible to reduce everything to one principle.
  • Thales' statement was the first expression of... a fundamental substance, of which all other things were transient forms. The word "substance"... was... not interpreted in the purely material sense ...Aristotle ascribes to Thales also ...All things are full of gods. ...[We can] imagine ...Thales took his view ...from meteorological considerations. ...[W]ater can take the most various shapes... ice and snow... vapor, and... clouds. It seems to turn into earth where the rivers form their delta, and it can spring from the earth. Water is the condition for life. Therefore... [as] a fundamental substance, it was natural to think of water first.
  • Let's lie down on the bank of the river
    and listen to water's pulse.
  • Endora: Samantha, I will not stand here and be insulted by something which is 94 percent water.
Darrin Stephens: Oh, yeah! Well, what about something which is a hundred percent hot air?
  • Water—the mighty, the pure, the beautiful, the unfathomable—where is thy element so glorious as it is in thine own domain, the deep seas ? What an infinity of power is in the far Atlantic, the boundary of two separate worlds, apart like those of memory and of hope ! or in the bright Pacific, whose tides are turned to gold by a southern sun, and in whose bosom sleep a thousand isles, each covered with the verdure, the flowers, and the fruit of Eden ! But, amid all thy hereditary kingdoms, to which hast thou given beauty, as a birthright, lavishly as thou hast to thy favourite Mediterranean ? The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky. The shadows of earth and earthly things, resting omen-like upon the waters, alone shewed which was the home and which the mirror of the celestial host.
  • The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
    Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind;
    Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
    The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
    Away in the distance is heard the vast sound,
    From the streets of the city that compass it round,
    Like the echo of mountains, or ocean's deep call;
    Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.
  • 天下莫柔弱於水。而攻堅強者、莫之能勝。以其無以易之。
    • 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
  • 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) This is also a quote from Bruce Lee as Li Tsung in the TV series "Longstreet", season one, episode one, airdate September 16, 1971
  • 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.
  • The water of Zamzam is a cure for whatever (ailment) it is taken for.
    • Muhammad Biharul Anwar, Volume 96, Page 245
Have you seen the water that you drink? Is it you who brought it down from the clouds, or is it We who bring it down? If We willed, We could make it bitter, so why are you not grateful? ~ Quran
  • And have you seen the water that you drink? Is it you who brought it down from the clouds, or is it We who bring it down? If We willed, We could make it bitter, so why are you not grateful?
  • “There really have been no studies that have associated the [pharmaceutical] residues in our water with human health problems,” says Ilene Ruhoy, a pediatric neurologist and environmental toxicologist who has studied the issue. That could be a sign that they pose no threat, but like Wilson, Ruhoy stresses how difficult it is to do these types of studies. “You’re talking about exposure to parts per million, parts per billion. And it’s a combination of drugs. It’s not just one drug in the water, it’s multitudes of. It’s exposure to these very, very minute amounts of these drugs, but many drugs over decades—ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years.”
  • '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", stanza 2, in ''The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1845), p. 136
  • For every person who perishes from the effects of a stimulant, at least a thousand die from the consequences of drinking impure water. This precious fluid, which daily infuses new life into us, is likewise the chief vehicle through which disease and death enter our bodies. The germs of destruction it conveys are enemies all the more terrible as they perform their fatal work unperceived. They seal our doom while we live and enjoy. The majority of people are so ignorant or careless in drinking water, and the consequences of this are so disastrous, that a philanthropist can scarcely use his efforts better than by endeavoring to enlighten those who are thus injuring themselves. By systematic purification and sterilization of the drinking water the human mass would be very considerably increased. It should be made a rigid rule which might be enforced by law to boil or to sterilize otherwise the drinking water in every household and public place. The mere filtering does not afford sufficient security against infection. All ice for internal uses should be artificially prepared from water thoroughly sterilized. The importance of eliminating germs of disease from the city water is generally recognized, but little is being done to improve the existing conditions, as no satisfactory method of sterilizing great quantities of water has yet been brought forward. By improved electrical appliances we are now enabled to produce ozone cheaply and in large amounts, and this ideal disinfectant seems to offer a happy solution of the important question.
  • Water is the first principle of everything.
  • “There’s been a fair amount of work done in both the U.S. and Canada as well as Europe that documents [pharmaceuticals] in wastewater and in water,” says Joanna Wilson, a biologist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She studies how drugs in the water affect zebrafish, a tiny freshwater fish in the minnow family. More recent data shows that the same types of compounds are in drinking water. One study found several pharmaceuticals in treated tap water, including atenolol (a beta-blocker), carbamazepine (an anticonvulsant), gemfibrozil (an antilipidemic), meprobamate (an antianxiety medication), and phenytoin (an anticonvulsant). The concentrations of these compounds were very low, usually less than 10 nanograms per liter, which is parts per trillion. For reference, one part per trillion is equivalent to about one second in 64 years.
  • “We have an aging demographic, and we have an increased reliance, in North America and Europe in particular, with the treatment of health concerns with pharmaceuticals.” This translates to more medicines making their way into the water system, and we need to determine how to deal with it, she says. “Long-term exposures [to pharmaceuticals] are quite a bit different than short term exposures, and we need to really start testing and figuring out if chronic exposures of low doses are relevant for the health of an individual or population of animals.”
  • And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
  • Verily, in the beginning this [world] was water.
    • Yajnavalkya, Satapatha Brahmana (SB XI 1, 6, 1). Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 8
  • Mr. Toastmaster, Gentlemen: I feel highly honored indeed to be one of the chosen to say a few words this evening. I am requested to respond to the toast: "Water, the purest and most wonderful thing that was ever created." You, as well as I, have seen it glistening in small globular teardrops on the eyelids of troubled sweethearts and peevish infants, as well as go rushing in torrents down the wrinkled cheeks of the aged ones. And in the early morning I have seen it glistening and sparkling like so many diamonds on the grass blades and the flowers. I have seen it rushing like some wild thing down the rapids of the river, only to flow quietly and lazily where the river widens. I have heard it roar and rumble as it dashed down some steep precipice. And what I have seen—I have seen—Gentlemen, what I want to say is, that as a beverage, it's a failure.
    • Author unknown; reported in Arthur Leroy Kaser, Good Toasts and Funny Stories (1923), p. 98. This quotation was submitted to the Queries column of The New York Times Book Review in 1971. One response to the query attributed this toast to a Colonel Bob Maxe at an annual dinner of the Bar Association of North Arkansas. The wording varied, and the attribution has not been verified in a published source. A more succinct version found its way into Congressional Research Service files: "Gentlemen—I have seen water in all of its majesty, pouring in torrents over great falls, rushing madly through deep gorges, and tossing wildly as waves of the oceans. I have seen it in the frozen stillness of a winter pond, in the flower-like crystals of snow flakes. I have seen it as the soft morning dew, and as the gentle teardrop in the eye of a beautiful lady—But gentlemen, as a beverage, it is a damn failure!"

Bible

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The Bible in Wikisource
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
  • 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.
  • Behold, God is great, and we know him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out.
    For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapour thereof:
    Which the clouds do drop and distil upon man abundantly.
  • For waters will burst forth in the wilderness,
    And streams in the desert plain.
    The heat-parched ground will become a reedy pool,
    And the thirsty ground springs of water.
    In the lairs where jackals rested,
    There will be green grass and reeds and papyrus.
  • Counsel in the heart of a man is as deep waters, but the man of discernment is one that will draw it up.
  • 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.
  • As water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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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 (31 July 1920); attributed to Hon. G. W. E. Russell, also to Lord Neaves. Several versions given in Notes and Queries (23 October 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.
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • And so never ending,
    But always descending.
  • "How does the Water
    Come down at 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

See also

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