Rivers quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside rivers — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The fish only knows that it lives in the water, after it is already on the river bank. Without our awareness of another world out there, it would never occur to us to change."
"Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]"
"A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories, 'tis a surer barrier and a more important frontier than mountain or river."
"As you swim the river of live, do the breast stroke. It helps to clear the turds from your path."
"It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right."
"Nor must Uncle Sam's Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broadbay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks."
"Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return."
"once upon a time all the rivers combined to protest against the action of the sea in making their waters salt. "When we come to you," sad they to the sea, "we are sweet and drinkable; but when once we have mingled with you, our waters become as briny and unpalatable as your own." The sea replied shortly, "Keep away from me, and you'll remain sweet."
"Time flows away like the water in the river."
"I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries."
"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials."
"You're such a big BABY. So cry me a river, build yourself a bridge, and GET OVER IT"
"He whose pure mind turns inward and searches whence does this 'I' arise, knows the Self and merges in You, the Lord, as a river into the sea."
"And we don't often get any wading birds in the River Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface."
"Wait by the river long enough and the body of your enemy will float by you."
"Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the language-river. Listen to the ocean, and bring your talky business to an end. Traditional words are just babbling in that presence, and babbling is a substitute for sight."
"Be like a river in generosity and giving help. Be like a sun in tenderness and pity. Be like night when covering other's faults. Be like a dead when furious and angry. Be like earth in modesty and humbleness. Be like a sea in tolerance. Be as you are or as you look like."
"The Way is to man as rivers and lakes are to fish, the natural condition of life."
"The river of sludge will go on and on. It isn't about me."
"The bridges that you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there."
