Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

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

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

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

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

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

Far water cannot quench near fire.

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

What water gives, water takes away.

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

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

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

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

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

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

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

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

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

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

The smell of rain is rich with life.

Water is the first principle of everything.

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

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

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.

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

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

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

When you drink water, think of its source.

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

Best is water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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