Cold Water Quotes

It could have been anyone," I said.
"All the women who look at you when we go out.
Ms. Bisette at school. God, even Hiyam. Why me?"
He stared at the coffee table,
the reflection of snow like confectioner's sugar sifting down.
"It couldn't have been anyone," he said softly.
"For a long time before I met you, I felt my life was this kind of test.
I was in deep, cold water, swimming for shore,
and my arms were getting tired,my skin numb.
On the shore was everything I thought I wanted: a better job, a house, a family."
He swallowed, his throat cording with tension.
"But I could barely keep my head above water.
Eventually I stopped seeing the shore. Only cold dark blue, in all directions.
I know it's cliché, but when I met you, my eyes opened.
I looked around, and realized I could stand up whenever I wanted.
There was firm ground under my feet.
That shore in the distance was an illusion.
I was already somewhere beautiful. ~ Leah Raeder

Since most houses today have running water, the ease with which most Americans can give water to a guest obscures the point that everyone in the biblical culture understood: "cold water" came only from the town well or cistern because water in jars at home warmed up very quickly in the heat. Giving a cup of cold water meant inconveniencing yourself and walking to the town well carrying a container, perhaps waiting in line to draw the water, lifting the water up out of the ground, and then carrying the water back to the house - all so someone could quench his thirst. The fact that Christ connects giving cold water with rewards to be received in the future is a powerful testimony to the value of even the most seemingly mundane good works in the eyes of God. ~ John W. Schoenheit

I tell Dylan I have to go to the bathroom. I shut the door and try to pee, but my dick's already sticking straight up at the ceiling. Great. I'm sure she caught that minor detail. We haven't even kissed yet. I shake my head and do my best to pee. I pull my pants back up, trying to make my hard-on less obvious. I stare at myself in the mirror and splash cold water on my face to calm down. My face flushed.
I concentrate on one critical thing. Last, Gray. You've got to make it last. No two pumps, you're done. Don't be that guy. You're stronger than that.
Think sports.
Try to name every candy bar you can.
Think about anything but what her body feel like, because as soon as you let yourself go there, It's over.
Enough with the pep talk. I take a deep breath. This is it. It's what you were born to do. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Great tracts of reindeer moss, for example: tiny stars and florets and inklings of an ancient flora growing on exhausted land. Crisp underfoot in summer, the stuff is like a patch of the arctic fallen into the world in the wrong place. Everywhere, there are bony shoulders and blades of flint. On wet mornings you can pick up shards knocked from flint cores by Neolithic craftsmen, tiny flakes of stone glowing in thin coats of cold water. ~ Helen Macdonald

There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream. ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury

I look at you, Masha, and it is like drinking cold water. I look at you and it is like my throat being cut. ~ Catherynne M Valente

My mother was like sand. The kind that warms you on a beach when you come shivering out of the cold water. The kind that clings to your body, leaving its impression on your skin to remind you where you've been and where you've come from. The kind you keep finding in your shoes and your pockets long after you've left the beach. She was also like the sand that archaeologists dig through. Layers and layers of sand that have kept dinosaur bones together for millions of years. And as hot and dusty and plain as that sand might be, those archaeologists are grateful for it, because without it to keep the bones in place, everything would scatter. Everything would fall apart. ~ Clare Vanderpool

There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint,' he remarked to her, as he munched away.

'I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,' Alice suggested, '- or some sal-volatile.'

'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. 'I said there was nothing LIKE it. ~ Lewis Carroll

I splash my head with ice-cold water and turn to face the mirror. When my image appears I instinctively look away.
Is there a truth on the other side that we do not want to see? ~ Shan Sa

A person can attack that bottle of vodka and drink it like it's a bottle of cold water. Two of my wife's girlfriends died from drinking. They weren't big pill-takers; they were drinkers. So it can't be so simple as to slide away, like Marilyn Monroe. ~ William Eggleston

There's no shower, no paper towels. Just the sink, cold water, and hand soap.

Girl, you look like a poster for that Carrie movie.

He has a point. There's blood on my arms and neck, even in my hair. Nothing to do but start scrubbing, hopefully before someone walks in with sleepy kids in need of a bathroom break. I'd probably give them nightmares for a week. ~ Rysa Walker

The feeling of the cold water and the hot sun and having the river just flow over your skin like a dolphin wasn't something I had enough words to describe but was the kind of feeling you never forget. I ~ Meg Rosoff

When it's cold, water freezes into ice; when it's warm, ice melts into water. Similarly, when you are confused, essence freezes into mind; when you are enlightened, mind melts into essence. ~ Muso Soseki

I lie in a bathtub of cold water, still sweating and singing love songs to myself. I put the gun to my head and cock it.
I think of my Grandma and remember that old feeling of being so in love that nothing matters except seeing and being seen by her. I drop the gun to my chest. I'm so sad and I can't really see a way out of what I'm feeling but I'm leaning on memory for help. Faster. Slower. I think I want to hurt myself more than I'm already hurting. I'm not the smartest boy in the world by a long shot, but even in my funk I know that easy remedies like eating your way out of sad, or fucking your way out of sad, or lying your way out of sad, or slanging your way out of sad, or robbing your way out of sad, or gambling your way out of sad, or shooting your way out of sad, are just slower, more acceptable ways for desperate folks, and especially paroled black boys in our country, to kill ourselves and others close to us in America. ~ Kiese Laymon

I don't know, maybe I'm immature, but I still find it funny if I dump cold water on my girlfriend when she's in the shower. ~ Daniel Tosh

What a man can do and suffer is unknown to himself till some occasion presents itself which draws out the hidden power. Just as one sees not in the water of an unruffled pond the fury and roar with which it can dash down a steep rock without injury to itself, or how high it is capable of rising; or as little as one can suspect the latent heat in ice-cold water. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Panic, panic, can't panic. Think of food. Think of sugar. I am a sugar cube in cold water. I won't dissolve. Precise edges. Made up of tiny, regular, secure parts. If the water were hotter I would worry, but it's cold. I stay together. Precise. Clean. Surrounded, but whole. ~ Jael McHenry

He smelled cold water and cold intrepid green. Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrence was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the smell of cold, raw green. ~ P. Harding

Shadow brushed his teeth and washed his face in the cold water of the little bathroom, and then walked back down the hall to the sitting room, turned out the light, and was asleep before his head touched the pillow. ~ Neil Gaiman

Since I didn't have a spork handy, I leaned over the sink and scooped up a palmful of cold water and pressed it against my face. There had to be a better option than a violent sporking. There had to be a way to get rid of my dad. ~ Devon Monk

As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice. ~ Markus Zusak

Restrooms at gas stations were an unpleasant and shocking surprise; I had never considered the serious drawbacks of such lazily-cleaned rooms. I was completely unable to ignore the filth, and wasted a burst of power to turn the sink, floors and porcelain toilet into sparkling, clean examples of their kind before using the facility. I felt that was a much less judgmental response than simply blowing the place off the face of the Earth, which was also a distinct temptation, especially when the storekeeper overcharged me for a bottle of cold water. ~ Rachel Caine

He inquired next what Allan had seen in the stranger to take such a fancy to? Allan had seen in him - what he didn't see in people in general. He wasn't like all the other fellows in the neighborhood. All the other fellows were cut out on the same pattern. Every man of them was equally healthy, muscular, loud, hard-hearted, clean-skinned, and rough; every man of them drank the same draughts of beer, smoked the same short pipes all day long, rode the best horse, shot over the best dog, and put the best bottle of wine in England on his table at night; every man of them sponged himself every morning in the same sort of tub of cold water and bragged about it in frosty weather in the same sort of way; every man of them thought getting into debt a capital joke and betting on horse-races one of the most meritorious actions that a human being can perform. They were, no doubt, excellent fellows in their way; but the worst of them was, they were all exactly alike. It was a perfect godsend to meet with a man like Midwinter - a man who was not cut out on the regular local pattern, and whose way in the world had the one great merit (in those parts) of being a way of his own. ~ Wilkie Collins

Wasn't there some belief about how if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump right out? But if you put it in cold water and turn up the heat gradually, it will allow itself to slowly cook to death? ~ Lisa Unger

Not again, Nix. I'll give my life to keep you safe." He stepped into his bathroom, undressed, and turned on the cold water. "The next time we meet, I'll make you mine. That's a promise. ~ Lia Davis

But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness he said, lay in working ~ George Orwell

No woman's ever that angry with me unless she knows she wants to fuck me and she's mad at herself for it," I tell her. "So no. I'm not shocked." "Hmm. Well aren't you an arrogant son of a bitch." I shrug. "I'm betting that's why you want my dick inside you." She laughs - the sound is like silver and moonlight, cold water running down my back. "Kiss me, Tommy Kendrick. And make it a good one. I want to know what I'm signing myself up for here before I let you do your worst." She ~ Callie Hart

They glowed in the darkness, all of them: pale shining wisps with rings of light where their eyes belonged, as if they were the dead - ghosts risen from their graves - not Gilbert Cline. Harper felt their grief as a slow current of cold water, and herself as a leaf revolving upon it. As ~ Joe Hill

Our God is not made of stone. His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes of God. God celebrates our feeble expressions of gratitude. ~ Richard J. Foster

You can throw a bucket of cold water on Russians, and we can take it. But one shouldn't humiliate us! ~ Vladimir Yakunin

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. ~ Edward Thomas

Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal. It strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it. ~ Aleatha Romig

Men think about right and wrong, they have to debate it, discuss it, draw upon possibilities and statistics, laws and codes. Wolves have to know. They have to know in an instant, pure instinct, not thought, because they can never be wrong. If they're wrong, the ice they walk upon cracks, their lungs filled with cold water and crystals. If they're wrong, their brothers and sisters starve and their pups are shot as they run. If they're wrong, the rabid wolf comes back, and he always comes back, only this time they're sleeping, and they can't even put up a fight as he splits them apart. ~ Alice Hoffman

The speeches, judging from the little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as having that degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets may claim: ~ Charles Dickens

IT'S COLD WATER IN THE FACE TO REALIZE YOU'RE NOT NEARLY AS SPECIAL AND AS UNUSUAL AS YOU MIGHT HAVE THOUGHT WHEN YOU WERE AN ALIENATED TEENAGER. ~ Adrian Tomine

For the next hour, the subject of Pandora's board game business was discarded as the group worked on the sandcastle. They paused at intervals to drink thirstily from jugs of cold water and lemonade that had been sent down from the house. Pandora threw herself into the project with enthusiasm, consulting with Justin, who had decided the castle must have a moat, square corner towers, a front gatehouse with a drawbridge, and battlement walls from which the occupants could drop scalding water or molten tar onto the advancing enemy.
Gabriel, who'd been instructed to dig the moat, stole frequent glances at Pandora, who had enough energy for ten people. Her face glowed beneath her battered straw hat, which she had managed to pry away from Ajax. She was sweaty and covered in sand, a few escaped locks of hair trailing over her neck and back. She played with the unselfconscious ease of a child, this woman of radical thoughts and ambitions. She was beautiful. Complex. Frustrating. He'd never met a woman who was so wholly and resolutely herself.
What the devil was he going to do about her? ~ Lisa Kleypas

I miss the ocean. I miss diving into the cold water and coming out a new man. On the road it's hard to get that feeling. Showers are okay, but there's nothing quite like being in the ocean. ~ Angus Stone

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating - a minute longer, and the metal is going to melt and start dripping and that'll be the end of everything. I need a quick splash of cold water, logic. I pour it on in buckets, but the logic hisses on the hot bearings and dissipates in the air as a fleeting white mist.
Well, of course, it's clear that you can't establish a function without taking into account what its limit is. And it's also clear that what I felt yesterday, that stupid "dissolving in the universe," if you take it to its limit, is death. Because that's exactly what death is - the fullest possible dissolving of myself into the universe. Hence, if we let L stand for love and D for death, then L = f (D), i.e., love and death ... ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

You're out there, Lespere. It's all over. It's just as if it had never happened, isn't it?"
"No."
"When anything's over, it's just like it never happened. Where's your life any better than mine, now? Now is what counts. Is it any better? Is it?"
"Yes, it's better!"
"How?"
"Because I got my thoughts, I remember!" cried Lespere, far away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both hands.
And he was right. With a feeling of cold water rushing through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And thus knowledge began to pull Hollis apart in slow, quivering precision.
"What good does it do you?" he cried to Lespere. "Now? When a thing's over it's not good any more. You're no better off than me."
"I'm resting easy," said Lespere. "I've had my turn. I'm not getting mean at the end, like you. ~ Ray Bradbury

But just as she thought she had successfully hidden herself from the beautiful truth of the moment, eagerly welcoming unconsciousness or perhaps even better, death, she was brought back to the life she no longer wanted, cold water breaking across her face before flying into her mouth and up her nostrils. She snapped her eyes open wildly, gasping for breath.
"Not this time," he said, snarling at her, his face inches from her own, "You're going to feel every bit of this. ~ Kristin Elyon

Nothing man has discovered or imagined is to be named with the steam engine. It has no fellow. Franklin capturing the lightning, Morse annihilating space with the telegraph, Bell transmitting speech through the air by the telephone, are not less mysterious - being more ethereal, perhaps in one sense they are even more so - still, the labor of the world performed by heating cold water places Watt and his steam engine in a class apart by itself. ~ Andrew Carnegie

I remember a story I once heard about drowning: that when you fall into cold water it's not that you drown right away but that the cold disorients you and makes you think that down is up and up is down, so you may be swimming, swimming, swimming for your life in the wrong direction, all the way toward the bottom until you sink. That's how I feel, as though everything has been turned around. ~ Lauren Oliver

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. ~ Mary Oliver

Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water. ~ Neville Cardus

The cold water embraced hime like no woman ever could ~ Harper Lee

If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet. ~ Jung Chang

Hollyleaf sprang on him, twisted his head to one side, sank her teeth into his fur and skin, telling herself over and over: This is the only way! Ashfur dropped to his belly and Hollyleaf jumped back as he rolled into the stream. She washed the blood from her paws, letting the cold water chill her legs, her flanks, all the way to her heart. ~ Erin Hunter

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness.

Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples.

When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of ~ Edward Lewis Wallant

The water was not God. The water undulating slightly with the waves unformed was not spiritual. It was jagged cold water and it felt perfect when we put our hands into it, and it kissed out palms again and again, would never stop kissing our palms - and why wasn't that enough? ~ Dave Eggers

I sail through life with great trust in my heart. Whoever stains and breaks that trust will be in a cold water best left behind.
I felt the cold breeze of monetary means through the low ethics of money driven minds.
I securely docked in a shore I call home without the cloaks of dead winter I saw on people who have used me. ~ Angelica Hopes

Realization is ice-cold water and it's dripping down my back. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Ice-cold water to my face wouldn't have shocked me more. How can the feeling of euphoria I just experienced become devastation in a mere five seconds? ~ Leigh Ann Lunsford

When Christ at Cana's feast by pow'r divine, Inspir'd cold water, with the warmth of wine, See! cry'd they while, in red'ning tide, it gush'd, The bashful stream hath seen its God and blush'd. ~ Aaron Hill

Basic SEAL training is six months of long, torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. ~ William H. McRaven

She strode down the hall and gently pushed the bedroom door open. "Oh, baby, you're so wet and hot!" Ben moaned as he thrust deeper into Janice. Fighting back tears, Grace threw the ice cold water onto the couple, causing them to shriek. She lifted her trembling chin. "Thought you two needed to cool off. ~ Kerrie Dubrock

Punctuation! We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or slapped onto sheets by an inky key. For sentences were sculptural, were we the only ones who understood? Sentences were bodies, too, as horny as the flesh-envelopes we wore around the house all day. Erotically enjambed in our loft bed, Clea patrolled my utterances for subject, verb, predicate, as a chef in a five-star kitchen would minister a recipe, insuring that a soufflé or sourdough would rise. A good brave sentence ("I can hardly bear your heel at my nape without roaring") might jolly Clea to instant climax. We'd rise from the bed giggling, clutching for glasses of cold water that sat in pools of their own sweat on bedside tables. The sentences had liberated our higher orgasms, nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the Administration's lousy grammar. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Although I was in the cold water and my teeth were chattering, I could feel perspiration running down my forehead as visions of failure swan around in my head. Although I was not the first, I felt that I was the first and would celebrate when I'd accomplished my goal. My focus was on reaching the other side of the Solent. ~ Stephen Richards

He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand. Then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink down it clear to the bottom. And after you had been down inside pain a while you found that like with cold water it was not nearly as cold as you had thought it was when your muscles were cringing themselves away from the outside edge of it as you moved around it trying to get up your nerve. He knew pain. ~ James Jones

On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old. ~ Stephen King

Cold,
cold water,
surrounds me now,
and all I've got is your hand. ~ Damien Rice

One of the things I loved about Chris was his sense of humor, which seemed perfectly matched with mine, even at its most offbeat. April Fools' Day was always a major highlight. A month before our daughter was due, I woke him up in the middle of the night.
"Don't panic," I told him, "but I think I'm going into labor."
"Do we have a bag?" he asked, jumping up immediately.
"No, no, don't worry." I slipped out of bed and went to take a shower.
Chris immediately got dressed and, calmly but very quickly, gathered my clothes and packed a suitcase.
"I'm ready!" he announced, barging into the bathroom.
"Babe, do you know what day it is?" I asked sweetly. It was two A.M., April 1.
"Are you kidding me?" he said, disbelieving.
I laughed and plunged back into the shower.
He quickly got revenge by flushing the toilet, sending a burst of cold water across my body.
In retrospect, maybe I'd been a little cruel, but we did love teasing each other. At our wedding, we'd smooshed cake into each other's faces. That began a tradition that continued at each birthday--whether it was ours or not. The routine never seemed to get old. We'd giggle and laugh, chasing each other as if we were crazy people. Our friends and neighbors got used to it--and learned to stay out of the line of fire. ~ Taya Kyle

Kaladin frowned. "Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?"
"Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated."
"Storms, you're spoiled," Kaladin said, smiling.
"I'm refined, you insolent farmer," Adolin said. Then he grinned. "Besides, I'll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here."
"Poor boy. ~ Brandon Sanderson

It is difficult to find anything more healthy to drink than good cold water, such as flows down to us from springs and snows of our mountains. This is the beverage we should drink. It should be our drink at all times. ~ Brigham Young

Develop the habit of doing unpleasant things quickly and without hesitation. If you are going to jump in the cold water, jump in the cold water. If you need to get up, get your ass out of bed. Do the dishes that need doing. Finish the hard jobs at work while everyone else is coming up with excuses to get out of them. ~ Rory Miller

I'll put my hand in no man's hand,' said Mr. Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man fighting with cold water, 'until I have - blown to fragments - the - a - detestable - serpent - HEEP! I'll partake of no one's hospitality, until I have - a - moved Mount Vesuvius - to eruption - on - a - the abandoned rascal - HEEP! Refreshment - a - underneath this roof - particularly punch - would - a - choke me - unless - I had - previously - choked the eyes - out of the head - a - of - interminable cheat, and liar - HEEP! I - a - I'll know nobody - and - a - say nothing - and - a - live nowhere - until I have crushed - to - a - undiscoverable atoms - the - transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer - HEEP! ~ Charles Dickens

GENERAL MAXIMS FOR HEALTH. Rise early. Eat simple food. Take plenty of exercise. Never fear a little fatigue. Let not children be dressed in tight clothes; it is necessary their limbs and muscles should have full play, if you wish for either health or beauty. Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it. A few days' abstinence, and cold water for a beverage, has driven off many an approaching disease. If you find yourself really ill, send for a good physician. Have nothing to do with quacks; ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child

I think that one morning, the Papess woke in her tower, and her blankets were so warm, and the sun was so golden, she could not bear it. I think she woke, and dressed, and washed her face in cold water, and rubbed her shaven head. I think she walked among her sisters, and for the first time saw that they were so beautiful, and she loved them. I think she woke up one morning of all her mornings, and found that her heart was as white as a silkworm, and the sun was clear as glass on her brow, and she believed then that she could live, and hold peace in her hand like a pearl. ~ Catherynne M Valente

When the whole discussion of "developing a national idea" hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror. (on CS Lewis) ~ John Piper

There are many examples where species share common plastic traits. What appears to be convergence may just be the plastic response of the organism to its environment. Examples include the following: Limbs that protrude from an animal's body have more surface area per unit mass than the rest of the body. In cold weather the animal loses more heat per unit mass from these limbs than from other parts of the body. In many species the tails and legs are shorter for those living in colder climates and larger for those in warmer climates. Gulls' wings are shorter in cold climates than in warm. Hares and foxes also have shorter ears in cold climates than in warm. Eskimos have shorter arms and legs than do people living in warmer climates. . . . Jodan's rule: Many species of fish tend to have more vertebrae when they live in cold water than do the same species living in warm water. These differences have been shown to depend on the temperature at which the fish have been reared.
What these rules show is not convergence. They show that different species adopt the same anatomical strategies when they have to cope with the same environmental conditions. We have seen that these strategies cannot come from random mutations. It is much more reasonable to say they come from environmental cues acting on the genetic program. ~ Lee Spetner

She was like no woman he'd ever known. She inspired compassion and fury at the same time, made him want to hold her tenderly even when he thought he might strangle her. How the hell did she do that?
Why didn't she fight him instead of pressing against him, whetting his appetite for her even more with the ripe sweetness of her body?
And damn it all to hell, how could a kiss make him want to toss aside the promise he'd made to her father and compromise what honor he had left? Because of this kiss, he was in danger of doing just that-and in danger of making love to Rose with her mother under the same roof. If he did that then he'd know he truly had no honor left.
If that wasn't a proverbial bucket of cold water, he didn't know what was. ~ Kathryn Smith

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The political controversy surrounding this Boston's Big Dig could have the effect of throwing cold water on any plans for farsighted infrastructure development around the country. ~ Andrew Natsios

And there was nothing left for me to do, but go.
Though the things of the world were strong with me still.
Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post–June rain.
Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth.
Someone's kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. ~ George Saunders

A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water. ~ Lawrence Durrell

What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from the ocean siege or October breeze. ~ Paul Harding

Don't be afraid to wake up your dream... give it a hard nudge, a toss of cold water... make it leap, make it fly. Dreams won't come to life without action. ~ Melody Lee

On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea that one benefits from cold water, crusts and debt collectors is now almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging, ~ Robert Hughes

I stood knee deep in the cold water, eyes closed, and listened to the end of the day over the river. Then I opened my eyes and pulled the line and began making long casts upstream just off the bank. The new rod was light and alive in my hand, it was beautiful, and the line sang out fast and smooth with a whisper like scratching a guitar string. I didn't mind the sound at all. ~ Peter Heller

The whole skin has this delightful sensitivity; it feels the sun, it feels the wind running inside one's garment, it feels water closing on it as one slips under - the catch in the breath, like a wave held back, the glow that releases one's entire cosmos, running to the ends of the body as the spent wave runs out upon the sand. This plunge into the cold water of a mountain pool seems for a brief moment to disintegrate the very self; it is not to be borne: one is lost: stricken: annihilated. Then life pours back. ~ Nan Shepherd

If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England's gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it. ~ John Niven

In an effort to teach myself self-restraint and self-control, I decided that until I completed my engineering degree, I would wear only white saris, refrain from sweets, sleep on a mat and take baths with cold water. I aimed to become self-sufficient; I would be my best friend and my worst enemy. I didn't know then that such a quote already existed in the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna says, 'Atma aiva hi atmano bandhu aatma aiva ripu atmanah'. ~ Sudha Murty

One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement ... It is easy to laugh at men's ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word. ~ William Barclay

However, whatever frightening mask it might assume, the national spirit in its original state was of pristine whiteness. Traveling through a country like Thailand, Honda realized more clearly than ever the simplicity and purity of things Japanese, like transparent stream water
through which one could glimpse pebbles below, or the probity of Shinto rites. Honda's life was not imbued with such spirit. Like the majority of Japanese he ignored it, behaving as though it did not exist and surviving by
escaping from it. All his life he had dodged things fundamental and artless: white silk, clear cold water, the zigzag white paper of the exorciser's staff fluttering in the breeze, the sacred precinct marked by a torii, the gods'
dwelling in the sea, the mountains, the vast ocean, the Japanese sword with its glistening blade so pure and sharp. Not only Honda, but the vast majority of Westernized Japanese, could no longer stand such intensely native elements. ~ Yukio Mishima

To get even near humility, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert. ~ C.S. Lewis

My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best ... ~ Roger Zelazny

He pivoted, gaze following me as I crossed to the shower and turned on the cold water, so it would drown out our conversation without steaming up the room.
Great," he muttered."Now they're going to think we're showering together. Maybe we can just tell them we were washing off the crawl space dirt and trying to conserve water. ~ Kelley Armstrong

The means by which I preserve my own health are, temperance, early rising, and spunging the body every morning with cold water, a practice I have pursued for thirty years ; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital, in the severest winter nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold ... ~ Astley Cooper

The antithetical or perhaps mirror image to sadness is the experience, similarly unique to one's late years, of a swift, mysterious wave of happiness, also causeless, but of much shorter duration. I cannot remember a time, before my sixties, when the consciousness of happiness would sweep over me and, like a shower of cold water when one is desperately overheated, offer me a passing sensation very close to glee.
Both sadness and fleeting happiness relate, I think, to mortality, to the consciousness of being old and of nearing the end of life ... these sensations ... surge up from the unconscious, to be a gift of long life or fortunate old age. Both sadness and happiness, but sadness more, are related to the fact that nothing of all this will endure for long. [p. 179] ~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Denny had been a little skeptical of her mother's fix-it ideas ever since the night her mother had fixed the shower head drip by putting a balloon over the nozzle. Getting hit by a giant, ice-cold water balloon when she'd stepped, half-asleep, into the shower the next morning had not been Denny's idea of a swell way to start the day. ~ Jackie French Koller

How do I break it to you that people aren't predictable? That life is confounding and sadistic in its cruelty? That when things go your way, it never makes you as happy as you'd expected, but when things go against you, it's a cold-water jolt, an unshakable outrage that dogs you forever. ~ Maria Semple

I closed my eyes and the roof was gone. I could see the stars while the piano tinkled. I could see Jupiter and it was blue, and Neptune was silver like a tennis ball sprayed silver. I could reach out and touch it, like cold water. ~ Heather O'Neill

She has been bewitched by a wicked sorceress, and will not regain her beauty until she is my wife.'
'Does she say so? Well if you believe that you may drink cold water and think it bacon'. ~ Andrew Lang

Summing up the basic rules related to drinking water and taking food: 1. Do not drink water until one hour after taking food. 2. Drink water sip by sip slowly. 3. Never drink cold water. 4. Drink ample amount of water after waking up early in the morning. And, the following rule related to food intake. 5. Consume the major part of your daily food early in the morning. Following these five guidelines of rightfully water and food intake, you can avoid any ailments that would occur to body and remain healthy throughout your life, without any need to consume any drug for ever. Please note that these general tips on how to drink & eat properly are applicable to most people, but of course, everyone's body is a unique construct. People with specific health issues should consult a physician before making any major changes in diet or food intake. ~ Rajiv Dixit

they're good fighters, i think proudly as i watch them duke it out. But as the oldest male in the house, it's my duty to break it up. I grab the collar of Carlos's shirt but on Louis's leg and land on the floor with them.
Before I can regain my balance, icy cold water is pored on my back. Turning quickly, I catch mi'ama dousing us all, a bucket poised in her fist abouve us while she is wearing her work uniform. She works as a checker for the local grocery store a couple blocks from our house. It doesn't pay a whole heck of a lot, but we don't need much.
"Get up" she orders, her fiery attitude out in full force.
"Shit, Ma" Carlos says, standing
Mi'ama takes what's left in her bucket, sticks her fingers in the icy water, and flicks the liquid in Carlos's face.
Luis laughs and before he knows it, he gets flicked with water as well. Will they ever learn?
"Any More attitude, Lous?" She asks.
"No, ma'am" Louis says, standing as straight as a soilder.
"You have any more filthy words to come out of that boca of yours, Carlos?" She dips her hand in the water as a warning.
"No, ma'am" echos soldier number two.
"And what abot you, Alejandro?" her eyes narrow into slits as she focuses on me
"What? I was try'in to break it up" I say innocently, giving her my you-can't-resist-me smile.
She flicks water in my face. "That's for not breaking it up sooner. Now get dressed, all of you, and come eat breakfast before school."
So m ~ Simone Elkeles

There was a real sense of comfort but at the same time it felt oddly tense. The feeling that every little things we said, these conversations, at any moment, they could stop being possible, and so they were precious, it was that feeling, and the sense of the miracle of this shared moment, here and now. Why were we so far apart, even when we are together? It was anice loneliness, like th sensation of washing your face with cold water. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I like rainbows.

We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn't a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction…
Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means "straight down," which is a pretty good description of the plunge.
...
…We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the d ~ Tim Cahill

Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping ~ Charles Dickens

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind.
The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come. ~ Alaina Stanford

I would like to have enough capital so that I would not have to slave from sunrise till dark as I did on dad's farm. I don't know as the work was any harder than what we do here, but there is a difference. There all we got was just about a bare living, at the best a few hundred dollars put away for a year's work, but here one don't know what the next stroke of the pick, or the next rocker full of dirt, may bring forth - an ounce or twenty ounces it may be. That is the excitement and fascination that makes one endure the hardships, working up to one's knees in cold water, breaking one's back in gouging and crevicing, the chance that the next panful will indicate the finding of a big deposit. ~ Chauncey L. Canfield