Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

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

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.

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

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

Too often, where we need water we find guns.

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

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

When you drink water, think of its source.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

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

Far water cannot quench near fire.

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

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

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

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

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

The smell of rain is rich with life.

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

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

Best is water.

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

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

What water gives, water takes away.

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 is the readiest means of making friends with nature.

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

Water is the first principle of everything.

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

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

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

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

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

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

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

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

Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.