"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea."
— e.e. cummings

"The ocean was the best place, of course. That was what she loved most. It was a feeling of freedom like no other, and yet a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched."
— Ann Brashares

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell."
— William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things."
— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

" And then I laugh, because it's so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it's all I an do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I'm ninety-three? So what if I'm ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?
It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this IS home."
— Sara Gruen

"Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills."
— Ambrose Bierce

"People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them."
— Ann Brashares

""...until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Martin Luther King Jr. "
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.”"
— Laura Esquivel

"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

"We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. "
— Thomas Fuller

"I love you Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide."
— Orson Scott Card

"Dip him in the river who loves water."
— William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A Facsimile in Full Color)

"It was very pleasant to savor its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present. -Tita"
— Laura Esquivel

"The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."
— Joseph Conrad

"I bought some dehydrated paper but I didn't know what to add."
— Steven Wright

"The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl."
— Pat Conroy (Beach Music)

"She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper. "
— Laura Esquivel

"Life in us is like the water in a river."
— Henry David Thoreau

""I look after those who look after me." He smacks his lips, stares at me, and adds, "I also look after those who don't." - Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)"
— Sara Gruen

"It was very pleasant to savor its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present. "
— Laura Esquivel

"Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour. "
— Laura Esquivel

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's greatest flood and runs over rocks fromt the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by the waters."
— Norman Maclean

"Water is the driving force in nature."
— Leonardo da Vinci

"The best way to keep your daughter out of hot water is to put some dishes in it."
— Bob Phillips

"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

"I suppose that, after the passion of love, water rights have caused more trouble than anything else to the human species."
— Alice Steinbach (Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman)

""Capella Flavor Drops are the perfect companion for flavoring coffee, tea even protein and diet shakes in as little as 3-5 drops. Flavor Drops come in a variety of flavors and sizes. Flavor Drops are also available to flavor water one bottle at a time. Flavor Drops is the only on-demand flavoring without any fats, calories, or sweeteners. Flavor Drops are perfect for diabetics since they contain no sweeteners of any kind." "
— Capella flavor drops

"Land and water are not really separate things, but they are separate words, and we perceive through words."
— David Rains Wallace (Untamed Garden and Other Personal Essays)

"Homeopaths argue that water has a memory."
— Scarlett Thomas (The End of Mr. Y)

"We are all bodies of water, guarding the mystery of our depths, but some of us have more to guard than others."
— Deborah Smith (Alice at Heart)

"Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"In my life, water has had the character of punctuation."
— Sue Ellen Campbell (Bringing the Mountain Home

"The pale water which goes away along paths of silence."
— Georges Rodenbach

"If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things."
— Rebecca Solnit (Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics)

"In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.'"
— Susan Quinn (Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times)

"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 lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be."
— Henry David Thoreau

"A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable."
— William Wordsworth

"Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container."
— Wallace Stevens

"'For the people of my country,' Renato said, 'water is everything: love, life, religion...even God.'

'It is like that for me too,' I said. 'In English we call that a metaphor.'

'Of course,' said Renato, 'and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.'"
— Pam Houston (Waltzing the Cat)

"I tried to give my fish a bath... but he kept pooping in the water!"
— Adriana Benton