I drink for the thirst to come.
—François Rabelais, 1535What water gives, water takes away.
—Portuguese proverbHe who would have clear water should go to the fountainhead.
—Italian proverbAll water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
—Toni Morrison, 1987Best is water.
—Pindar, 476 BCWater is the first principle of everything.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 600 BCThe mill will never grind with water that is past.
—Daniel McCallum, 1870Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.
—John Updike, 1989When you drink water, think of its source.
—Chinese proverbThousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957Water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element.
—Christopher Hitchens, 2008A fool and water will go the way they are diverted.
—Ethiopian proverbSeek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.
—Rumi, c. 1260He knows the water best who has waded through it.
—Danish proverbWater, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939I came upon no wine, / So wonderful as thirst.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923No poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.
—Horace, 35 BCIf you stain clear water with filth, you will never find a drink.
—Aeschylus, 458 BCI ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me.
—Virginia Woolf, 1931There is no small pleasure in sweet water.
—Ovid, c. 10Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.
—Lord Byron, 1819If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
—Margaret Atwood, 2005Too often, where we need water we find guns.
—Ban Ki-moon, 2008Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.
—Anthony Doerr, 2006Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.
—Zadie Smith, 2000Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.
—Clover Adams, 1882The waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.
—Izaak Walton, 1653Far water cannot quench near fire.
—Japanese proverbThese landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
—Claude Monet, 1908Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656Spit not in the well; you may have to drink its water.
—French proverbThe history of the land has been written very largely in water.
—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
—Sylvia Alice Earle, 1995Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.
—Gertrude Stein, 1914Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.
—Ge Hong, c. 300The United States has virtually set up an empire on impounded and redistributed water.
—Charles P. Berkey, 1946It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCWater is the readiest means of making friends with nature.
—Ludwig Feuerbach, 1841To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
—Huangbo Xiyun, c. 850The smell of rain is rich with life.
—Estela Portillo Trambley, 1975Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
—Brooks Atkinson, 1940There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859