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Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined,
art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but
rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that
exceeds the delight of the senses.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939
This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst.
"You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink."
"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."
"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
"Anything you like..."
"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince |
Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a
third thing, that makes water and nobody knows what that is.
D.H. Lawrence, Pansies, 1929 |
Only in quiet waters do things mirror
themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of
the world.
Hans Margolius
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still
water that we can see.
Taoist proverb
In order to reflect, think and plan, you must quiet yourself. You
can’t see your reflection in churning waters. Water must be still to see
your reflection.
Karen Susman, The Remarkable Networking Toolbox
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.
Rabindranath Tagore
|
Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's
creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to
descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy
Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in
usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth
of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received
the grace of the Spirit.
John of Damascus |
There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse. The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst--symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea, babbling along my table--this water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God.
George Macdonald (1824-1905) |
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Everywhere water is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrops;
singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gems till the leaves all
seem to turn to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the setting
sun; or a white gauze around the midnight moon.
John Ballantine Gough, A Glass of Water
Innumerable as the stars of night, Or stars of morning, dewdrops
which the sun Impearls on every leaf and every flower.
John Milton
Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done,
Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun?
Rose Fyleman
|
I have left almost to the last the magic of water, an element
which owing to its changefulness of form and mood and colour and to
the vast range of its effects is ever the principal source of
landscape beauty, and has like music a mysterious influence over the
mind.
Sir George Sitwell (On the Making of Gardens) |
The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then
that
‘W-A-T-E-R’ meant the wonderful cool something that was
flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave
it light, joy, set it free.
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life |
Water is the most extraordinary substance!
Practically all its properties are anomalous, which enabled life to use
it as building
material for its machinery.
Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi |
Our bodies are molded rivers.
Novalis |
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the
precipitate.
Steven Wrightfont |
Ever wonder about those people
who spend $2 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try
spelling Evian backward.
George Carlin
Bottled water costs about 2000 times more than tap water. Can you imagine paying 2000 times the price of anything else? How about a $ 10,000 sandwich?
Annie Leonard
Enough. Man is capable of reform once presented with the facts,
and the fact is that bottling water and shipping it is a
big waste of fuel, so stop already.
Garrison Keillor
I have always been a big advocate of tap water—not because I think it harmless but because the idea of purchasing water extracted from some remote watershed and then hauled halfway round the world bothers me. Drinking bottled water relieves people of their concern about ecological threats to the river they live by or to the basins of groundwater they live over. It's the same kind of thinking that leads some to the complacent conclusion that if things on earth get bad enough, well, we'll just blast off to a space station somewhere else.
Sandra Steingraber, Having Faith, 2001
|
From a drop of water a logician
could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without
having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great
chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of
it.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet |
Water is insipid, inodorous, colorless and smooth.
Edmund Burke, on the sublime and beautiful, 1757 |
Water flows from high in the mountains
Water runs deep in the Earth
Miraculously, water comes to us,
And sustains all life.
Thich Nhat Hanh |
Water sustains all.
Thales of Miletus, 600 B.C.
The wise man of Miletus thus declared the first of things is
water.
J.S. Blackie, 1877
|
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A man of wisdom delights in water.
Confucius, Analects |
In every glass of water we drink,
some of the water has already passed through fishes, trees,
bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including
people.
Elliot A. Norse, Animal Extinctions |
One day, someone showed me a
glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or
half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem.
Alexander Jodorowsky |
You could write the story of
man's growth in terms of his epic concerns with water.
Bernard Frank |
Water is the only substance on
earth that is naturally present in three different forms - as a
liquid, a solid (ice) and as a gas (water vapor).
Author unknown |
Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi |
A little water is a sea to an ant.
Afghan Proverb |
All the waters run to the sea and
yet the sea is not full, and from the place where they began,
thither they return again.
Ecclesiastes |
We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon,
that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and
fields, and we ask that they teach us and show us the way.
Native American, Chinook Blessing Litany.
Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to
go.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) |
Gutta cavat lapidem (Dripping water hollows out a stone)
Ovid, Epistulae Ex Ponto, Book 3, no. 10, 1. 5
The drops of rain make a hole in the stone,
not by violence, but by oft falling.
Lucretius
Rain! whose soft architectural
hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the
very mountains.
Henry Ward Beecher
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the
gentle touches of air
and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Henry David Thoreau |
Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.”
Water flows humbly to the lowest level.
Lao-Tzu, Chinese philosopher (6th century B.C.)
Nothing is weaker than water,
Yet for overcoming what is hard and strong,
Nothing surpasses it.
Lao-Tzu |
The sound of water says what I think.
Chuang Tzu (c.360 BC - c. 275 BC)
|
When you hear the splash
Of the water drops that fall
Into the stone bowl
You will feel that all the dust
Of your mind is washed away.
Sen-No-Rikyu |
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The Waters are Nature's storehouse in which she locks up her wonders.
Isaac Waltonn |
Water is the driver of Nature.
Leonardo da Vinci
When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that
has gone before and the first of what is still to come.
Leonardo da Vinci
In time and with water, everything changes.
Leonardo da Vinci |
If you gave me several million years, there would be nothing
that did not grow in beauty if it were surrounded by water.
Jan Erik Vold, What All The World Knows |
Water is the principle, or the element, of things.
All things are water.
Plutarch, Placita philosophorum, about A.D. 46 |
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W.H. Auden (1907 - 1993) |
Water is the basis of life and the blue arteries of the earth! Everything in the non-marine environment depends on freshwater to survive.
Sandra Postel |
To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth
together.
Barry Lopez |
By means of water, we give life to everything.
Koran, 21:30 |
If water is too clear, it will
not contain fish; people who are too cautious will never gain
wisdom.
Chinese proverb |
In wine there is wisdom, in beer
there is strength, in water there is bacteria.
David Auerbach (2002)
|
The four building blocks of the
universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
Dave Barry
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer.
Dave Barry |
Drink no longer water but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
St. Paul, 1 Timothy 5:23 |
God made only
water, but man made wine.
Victor Hugo |
Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
Galileo Gallilei |
In water one sees one's own face; But in wine,
one beholds the heart of another.
French proverb |
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Lord Byron,
Don Juan |
And Noah
he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care
where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
Gilbert Keith Chesterton |
Fish, to taste good, must swim three times: in water, in butter, and in wine.
Proverb
|
Between each wine and each dish one should drink a mouthful of pure fresh water, preferably not (or only slightly) aerated.
Paul Ramain (French doctor) |
...all the charming and beautiful things, from
the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to
the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour
came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than
mere oxygen and hydrogen.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) |
No poems can live long or please that are written by water-drinkers.
Horace, Roman lyric poet (65 -8 B.C.)
The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.
Horace
|
A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.
Charles Baudelaire, French poet (1821-1867) |
There was a Young Person in pink,
Who called out for something to drink;
But they said, 'O my daughter,
there's nothing but water!'
Which vexed that Young Person in pink.
Edward Lear |
Before Noah, men having only
water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly...they became
abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water
they loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen that all his
contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike
to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and
revealed to him the art of making le vin. By the aid of this liquid
he unveiled more and more truth.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.
Benjamin Franklin
Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.
Benjamin Franklin
The
formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube
H2O2?
Lily Tomlin |
When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that
has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a
tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented. .
Samuel Butler, Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1951, p. 255) |
When the well is dry, we learn
the worth of water.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac (1746?)
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732
When you're thirsty, it's too late to think about digging a well.
Japanese Proverb
You don't miss your water until your well runs dry.
an old country proverb |
Don't empty the water jar until the rain falls.
Philippine proverb |
Potable, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable;
indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they
find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder
known as thirst, for which it is a medicine.
Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914) |
I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.
Henry David
Thoreau
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love
for water, but should we not pity him.
Henry David Thoreau |
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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
Mark Twain
Whenever someone asks me if I want water with my Scotch, I say I'm thirsty, not dirty.
Joe E. Lewis
|
I never drink water. I'm afraid
it will become habit-forming.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on
nothing but food and water.
W.C. Fields
Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
W.C. Fields, My Little Chickadee.
I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.
W. C. Fields
I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
W. C. Fields
|
It ain't no use to grumble and complain;
It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
Why, rain's my choice.
James Whitcomb Riley, Rain, 1849 – 1916
For after all the best thing one can do when
it is raining, is to let it rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rain in Summer
Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without
rain, there would be no life. /b>
John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, 1989
The good rain, like the bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your headwith silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
Langston Hughes, April Rain Song
I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains.
One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge,
but one misses a world of loveliness.
Adeline Knapp
|
O Lord,
grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning,
but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, heliaanthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought
loving plants - I will write their names on a paper if you like - and grant that the sun may shine the whole day
long, but not everywhere (not for instance, on spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not
to much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew,
and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven.
Amen.
Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, 1929
|
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world.
James Thomson, Seasons - Spring
|
Plans to protect air and water,
wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.
Stewart Udall |
Water is the lifeblood of our bodies, our economy, our nation and
our well-being.
Stephen Johnson, EPA Administrator |
The care of rivers is not a question of rivers but of the human
heart.
Tanaka Shozo, c. 1900 |
All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water,
Cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water,
Cool water.
The nights are cool and I'm a fool each stars a pool of water,
Cool water.
But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn and carry on to water,
Cool water. |
We think of our land and water and human resources not as static and
sterile possessions but as lifegiving assets to be directed by wise
provisions for future days.
Franklin D. Rooseveltt |
Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his
many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil
and the fact that it rains.
Unknown author |
Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no
life without water.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize Winner
for Medicine. |
A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving,
living part of the very earth itself.
Laura Gilpin |
A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes |
Water is the soul of the earth.
attributed to Robert A Swanson & W.H. Auden |
|
When you drink the water, remember the spring.
Chinese Proverb |
To get clear water, one must go
to the source.
French Proverb
Dirty water will quench few.
French 16th Century Proverb
There is no small pleasure in sweet water. [Lat., Est in aqua dulci non
invidiosa voluptas.]
Author: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) |
Water is the blood in our veins.
Levi Eshkol, Israeli Prime Minister, 1962 |
What is the earth but a lump of clay surrounded by water?
Bharthari (c.570-c.651), Vairagya-sataka |
Children of a culture born in a water-rich environment, we have
never really learned how important water is to us. We understand it,
but we do not respect it.
William Ashworth, Nor Any Drop to Drink, 1982 |
There are also kinds of water that cause death, as they run
through harmful juices in the soil and become poisonous.
Vitruvius, On Architecture, 1st century B.C |
We are a water-drinking people, and we are allowing every brook
to be defiled.
George Bird Grinnell, Outdoor America, February 1925
If you saw what the river carried, you would never drink the
water.
Jamaican Proverb
He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his
stomach more animated beings than there are men, women, and children
on the face of the globe.
Syndney Smith, Letter to Countess Grey, November 19, 1834
Filthy water cannot be washed.
African proverb
Til taught by pain, men really know not what good water is worth.
From "Don Juan" by Byronn
The sewer is the conscience of the city.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862 |
In order for something to become clean, something else must become
dirty.
Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law
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The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
Native American Proverb
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Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this
country...But because water belongs to no one - except the people -
special interests, including government polluters, use it as their
private sewers.
Ralph Nader
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We're all downstream.
Ecologist's motto adopted by Margaret & Jim Drescher |
Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it
sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.
Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot, 1946
|
Clean water is not an expenditure of Federal funds; clean water is an investment in the
future of our country.
Bud Shuster, U.S. Representative, |
We used to think that energy and water would be the critical issues
for the next century. Now we think water will be the critical issue.
Mostafa Tolba of Egypt |
We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most
valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time
to do something about this problem before it is too late.
Mikhail Gorbachev, President of Green Cross International,
quoted in Peter Swanson's Water: The Drop of Life, 2001 |
The trouble with water—and there is trouble with water—is that they're not making any
more of it. They're not making any less, mind, but no more either. There is the same
amount of water in the planet now as there was in prehistoric times. People, however,
they're making more of—many more, far more than is ecologically sensible—and all those
people are utterly dependent on water for their lives (humans consist mostly of water),
for their livelihoods, their food, and increasingly, their industry. Humans can live
for a month without food but will die in less than a week without water. Humans consume
water, discard it, poison it, waste it, and restlessly change the hydrological cycles,
indifferent to the consequences: too many people, too little water, water in the wrong
places and in the wrong amounts.
Marq de Villiers, Water, 2000 |
Man is a complex being; he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.
Gil Stern |
In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to
his most essential needs for survival, water along with other
resources has become the victim of his indifference.
Rachel Carson |
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have
become global garbage cans.
Jacques Cousteau
We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
Jacques Cousteau |
Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power
is ancient. It's called rain.
Michael McClary |
Anyone who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two
Nobel prizes - one for peace and one for science.
John F. Kennedy |
A man from the west will fight over three things: water, women
and gold, and usually in that order.
Senator Barry Goldwater, AZ
In the Western United States,
water flows uphill to money.
Glen Sanders
Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.
Unknown (widely attributed to Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), but this is under dispute)
The solution to our water problems is more rain.
Attributed to Mark Twain |
Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights.
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights, Nov 27, 2002 |
Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.
Mikhail Gorbachev |
The River... It's my world, and I don't want any
other. What it hasn't got is not worth having,
and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had
together!
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows |
You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are
ever flowing on to you.
Heraclitus of Ephesus |
To serve the cause of water adequately... We must get to know it in its
true being. And how do we do this? Why, by treating it in the very way
exemplified by its own behavior; that is, whenever we encounter it, we
wash the tablet of our souls clean of all other impressions in order to
allow the being of water to make its imprint on us.
Theodor Schwenk, Water: The Element of Life |
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For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little
about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect
for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the
intricate web of life that water supports.
Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity |
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Water is the most basic of all resources. Civilizations grew or
withered depending on its availability..
Dr. Nathan W. Snyder, Ralph M. Parsons Engineering
Civilization has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water.
Paolo Lugari (founder of the Gaviotas Community in Colombia |
Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our
children's lifetime. The health of our waters is the
principal measure of how we live on the land.
Luna Leopold |
The air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and no
one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink and
breathe and walk and therefore each man has a right to his share of
each.
James Fennimore Cooper |
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is
earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his
own nature.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "The Ponds" (1854) |
We live by the grace of water
National Geographic Special Edition, Nov. 1993br>
It is water, in every form and at every scale, that saturates the mind.
All the water that will ever be is, right now.
National Geographic, October 1993 |
Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not
affected the water’s mulatto complexion in the least; a score of
centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the
turbulent, bank-carving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it hold nearly
an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the
diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate
the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and you will find them both
good: the one is good to eat, the other is good to drink. The land is
very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases
hunger; the other thirst. But the natives do not take them separately,
but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the
bottom of the glass, they stir it up and then take the draught as they
would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter,
but once used to it, he will prefer it to water. This is really the
case. It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is
worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing.
Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Life on the Mississippipi
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was
a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to
me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as
if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once
and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)
My books are water; those of great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.
Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) |
Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and
sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, sometimes
it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometime health-giving,
sometimes poisonous. It suffers change into as many natures as are the
different places through which it passes. And as the mirror changes with
the colour of its subject, so it alters with the nature of the place,
becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty,
incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green, black,
blue, greasy, fat or slim. Sometimes it starts a conflagration,
sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, carries away or
sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or
empties, raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the
cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, nourishes
at times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, at
times is without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great
floods. In time and with water, everything changes.
Leonardo da Vinci |
When oxygen and hydrogen find one another, their joining produces fiery
passion.
Out of this fire, water is born. Quaint Victorian chemistry gives us an
image of one
oxygen and two hydrogen atoms in a fixed molecule that bounces around
from
place to place. The reality of water is not so orderly. The hydrogen
atoms are not
owned by any particular oxygen atom. Water is a substance very much in
love
with itself, and the atoms connect in webs and clusters where oxygen
shares
around the hydrogen atoms freely, a fluid situation indeed.
Ian D. Anderson, (aka Ian Lurking Bear) |
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4. And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.
10. And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good...
20. ...And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Genesis, Chapter 1, King James translation of the Bible
1. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Psalm 23, King James translation of the Bible
10. He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.
11. They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst.
12. By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches.
13. He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.
Psalm 104, King James translation of the Bible
23. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in
the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain
moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the
rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first
month.
24. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats
shall overflow with wine and oil.
Joel, Chapter 2, King James translation of the Bible
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From earliest times, water has always been acknowledged as a primary human good and an
indispensable natural resource. Around the great rivers of the world, like the
Mississippi, great cultures have developed, while over the course of the centuries the
prosperity of countless societies has been linked to these waterways. Today, however,
the great fluvial systems of every continent are exposed to serious threats, often as a
result of man’s activity and decisions. Concern for the fate of the great rivers of the
earth must lead us to reflect soberly on the model of development which our society is
pursuing. A purely economic and technological understanding of progress, to the extent
that it fails to acknowledge its intrinsic limitations and to take into consideration
the integral good of humanity, will inevitably provoke negative consequences for
individuals, peoples and creation itself.
Pope Benedict XVI |
Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and
precious, and pure.
Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) Canticle of the Sun |
Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a
Spring brook till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a
strong kinship with the waters of this world.
Hal Borland (1900-1978), Sundial of the Seasons |
Before enlightenment, Chop wood
Carry water. After enlightenment, Chop wood
Carry water.
Zen Proverb |
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" 1798
|
Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish proverb |
We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
T. H. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life (1869)
|
It is wise to bring some water, when one goes out to look for
water
Arab Proverb |
A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
Carl Reiner
Snow is just time-release water.
resident of Granby Colorado |
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
Cyril Connolly
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or
the sea.
Isak Dinesen |
I have been instrumental in banning bottled water on the set. It hasn't gone that well with the crew... so I replaced it with tequila.
Hugh Laurie
|
You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water.
John Dryden
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
Michel de Montaigne |
It is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants, but bad masters.
Aesop
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The day, water, sun, moon, night - I do not have to purchase these things with money.
Plautus
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The most efficient water power in the world - women's tears.
Wilson Mizner
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There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.
Erma Bombeck
|
I got this powdered water - now I don't know what to add.
Steven Wright
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And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
Henry Wordsworth, "Resolution and Independence
And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. Byron,"Parisina" |
Throughout the history of literature, the guy who poisons the well
has been the worst of all villains.
Author unknown |
Just Add Water
The words on labels tell this tale,
In recipes, in ads by mail,
And chances are, at work or play,
You'll see these famous words today
-
Just add water.
You'd be surprised how many things
Are dry and useless till one brings
The magic liquid known to all;
You use it when you heed the call
-
Just add water.
To illustrate and prove this thought,
Remember all the food you've bought
On which was printed, clear and bright,
Instructions that make cooking light
-
Just add water.
You now can buy
Dried fruits, or soups, or tasty cakes;
To powdered milk and frozen juices,
To products with a thousand uses,
Just add water.
Imagine for a minute, please,
An arid wasteland, bare of trees;
This could be farmland, rich and good
And quite productive if we could
Just add water.
What turns cement into concrete?
What changes seed to golden wheat?
No other words now known to man
Can answer that: but these words can:
Just add water.
David J. Ford
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When you look at that nature world it becomes an icon, it becomes
a holy picture that speaks of the origins of the world. Almost every
mythology sees the origins of life coming out of water. And, curiously,
that's true. It's amusing that the origin of life out of water is in myths
and then again, finally, in science, we find the same thing. It's exactly so.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey |
Tis a little thing
To give a cup of water; yet its draught
Of cool refreshment, drain'd by fever'd lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarean juice
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.
Sir Thomas Noon lfourd, Ion
|
Water from a fountain quenches the excessive heat which would destroy this life.
Thus water can be called the only everlasting source of continuous being.
Nicola alvi, 1732
|
How it
pours, pours, pours, In a never-ending sheet! How it drives beneath
the doors! How it soaks the passer's feet! How it rattles on the
shutter! How it rumples up the lawn! How 'twill sigh, and moan, and
mutter, From darkness until dawn.
Rossiter Johnson, Rhyme of the Rain |
I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water . . .
has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations.
It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws
so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.
Roderick Haig-Brown |
It is clear that life on Earth depends on the unusual structure and anomalous nature of liquid water. Organisms consist mostly of liquid water. This water performs many functions and it can never be considered simply as an inert diluent; it transports, lubricates, reacts, stabilizes, signals, structures and partitions. The living world should be thought of as an equal partnership between the biological molecules and water.
Martin Chaplin,
Water Structure and Science |
A chemist's view of the world is not as narrow as one might think! Yes, we start with the atom, and then go on to the rules governing the kinds of structural units that can be made from them. We are taught early on to predict the properties of bulk matter from these geometric arrangements.
And then we come to H2O, and are shocked to find that many of these predictions are way off, and that water (and by implication, life itself) should not even exist on our planet! But we soon learn that this tiny combination of three nuclei and ten electrons possesses special properties that make it unique among the more than 15 million chemical species we presently know. When we stop to ponder the consequences of this, chemistry moves from being an arcane science to a voyage of wonder and pleasure as we learn to relate the microscopic world of the atom to the greater world in which we all live.
Stephen Lower -
A gentle introduction to water and its structure |
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Copyright © 2001 Randy Johnson. All rights reserved.
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Updated February 2012 |
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