Lapham’s Quarterly

Best is water.

Far water cannot quench near fire.

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

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

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

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

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

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

What water gives, water takes away.

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

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

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

The smell of rain is rich with life.

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.

Water is the first principle of everything.

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

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

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

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

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

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

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

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

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

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

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

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

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

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

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

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

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

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

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

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

When you drink water, think of its source.

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

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

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

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

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.