Lapham’s Quarterly

No poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

Spit not in the well; you may have to drink its water.

Water is the first principle of everything.

Water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element.

To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.

I ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me.

If you stain clear water with filth, you will never find a drink.

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

I came upon no wine, / So wonderful as thirst.

Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.

The history of the land has been written very largely in water.

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

The smell of rain is rich with life.

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.

I drink for the thirst to come.

If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

The United States has virtually set up an empire on impounded and redistributed water.

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.

When you drink water, think of its source.

Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.

The waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.

What water gives, water takes away.

Best is water.

He who would have clear water should go to the fountainhead.

Far water cannot quench near fire.

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Seek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.

A fool and water will go the way they are diverted.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.