Lapham’s Quarterly

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

When you drink water, think of its source.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best is water.

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

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

What water gives, water takes away.

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

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

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

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

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

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

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

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

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.

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

Far water cannot quench near fire.

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

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

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

Water is the first principle of everything.

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

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

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

The smell of rain is rich with life.

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

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

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

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

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

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

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