What is a waterto all of us? It’s not only H2O but it’s just a life. Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
Water is the driver of Nature.
– Leonardo da Vinci
We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
– Jacques Cousteau
A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.
– Laura Gilpin – From The Rio Grande, 1949
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, 1970
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-Exupery (1900-1944), Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939
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 (1882-1944), The Madwomen of Chaillot, 1946
When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746
High quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political
slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time,
is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. Of all our planet’s
activities–geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the
disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind) — no force
is greater than the hydrologic cycle.
– Richard Bangs and Christian Kallen, Rivergods, 1985
Between earth and earth’s atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never
a drop more, never a drop less.
This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.
– Linda Hogan, “Northern Lights,” Autumn 1990
Filthy water cannot be washed.
– West African Proverb
If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one
fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving
environmental quality.
– William C. Clark, speech, Racine, Wisconsin, April 1988
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. . .
Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.
– Elliot A. Norse, in R.J. Hoage, ed., Animal Extinctions, 1985
Estuaries are a happy land, rich in the continent itself, stirred by the forces of nature
like the soup of a French chef; the home of myriad forms of life from bacteria and
protozoans to grasses and mammals; the nursery, resting place, and refuge of
countless things.
– Stanely A. Cain, speech, 1966
Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.
– Isaac Aasimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
The oceans are the planet’s last great living wilderness, man’s only remaining frontier on
earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.
– John L. Cullney, “Wilderness Conservation,” September-October 1990
The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and
stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed
by man.
– Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), Log of the Sun, 1906
Wetlands have a poor public image. . . Yet they are among the earth’s greatest natural
assets. . . mankind’s waterlogged wealth.
– Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 1986
Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and
cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever
is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
– Lao-Tzu (600 B.C.)
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
– Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798
Great Quotes Every Day 