Water quotes
3.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside water — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart."
"If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you."
"Be like water, my friend."
"This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water."
"GOOD MORNING," said the little prince. "Good Morning," said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink. "Why do you sell these pills?" "They save so much time," the salesclerk said. "Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week." "And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?" "Whatever you like." "If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked," the little prince said to himself, "I'd walk very slowly toward a water fountain."
"Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed."
"If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith."
"Dripping water hollows out a stone"
"You see, in the image of Aquarius, it's a man who pours water into the fish. Now the fish is the unconscious. It is not enough just to have it. We have to actively turn towards it and support it so that it then helps us."
"Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt."
"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."
"American's could be any more self absorbed if they were made of equal parts water and paper towel."
"If you want to learn to swim you have to throw yourself in the water."
"You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup."
"A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically."
"And each one is a partaker of this spiritual origin in regeneration; and to every one when he is re-born, the water of baptism is like the Virgin's womb; for the same Holy Spirit fills the font, Who filled the Virgin, that the sin, which that sacred conception overthrew, may be taken away by this mystical washing."
"Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it's a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan."
"When the mind is turbulent, uncontrolled and restless, it is like a pond of water that is filled with mud. Therefore when we look within ourselves, all we perceive is the mud of our material conceptions of life. But when the mind is still through discipline, and through yoga, it is like a pond that has no waves and no turbulence. Then we can perceive through that crystal clear water the eternal nature of our soul."
"So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius."
"As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end."
