Lapham’s Quarterly

The smell of rain is rich with life.

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

What water gives, water takes away.

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

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

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

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

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

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

Water is the first principle of everything.

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

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

When you drink water, think of its source.

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

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

Best is water.

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

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

Far water cannot quench near fire.

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

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

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

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

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

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

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

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.

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

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

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