Taoism Water Quotes

When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo. ~ Zhuangzi

I was born in New York City on a cold January night when the water pipes in our apartment froze and burst. Fortunately, my mother was in the hospital rather than at home at the time. ~ Gertrude B. Elion

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. ~ David Whyte

The ending is coming. I can feel it. I don't know if I can take it this time. But then again, I say that every time and yet, every time I take it. And, I come back to her again for more. I will take whatever time I can get with her. I will do that for a lifetime. I will. I know that much about myself. She is my water. I can never get enough of her, and it appears that I will die trying to love her, to keep her, to hold her with me, even though our time together seems to evaporate so swiftly. It slips through our fingers so damn fast that we don't even have time to savor it when we're together. ~ Katherine Owen

When people do not dread authorities, then a greater dread descends. ~ Laozi

Knowledge is our gift.
Understanding is our blessing.
Wisdom is our fortune.
Enlightenment is our reward.

Art is our gift.
Science is our blessing.
Technology is our fortune.
God is our reward.

Time is our gift.
Light is our blessing.
Fate is our fortune.
Nature is our reward.

Land is our gift.
Water is our blessing.
Air is our fortune.
Life is our reward.

Mothers are our gift.
Youth are our blessing.
Elders are our fortune.
Children are our reward.

The past is our gift.
The present is our blessing.
The future is our fortune.
Eternity is our reward.

The mind is our gift.
The heart is our blessing.
The body is our fortune.
The soul is our reward.

Faith is our gift.
Joy is our blessing.
Virtue is our fortune.
Love is our reward. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You do not deserve most of what has happened or will. But there is something I can offer you. Whoever you are. Out there. As lonely as it gets, you are not alone. There is another kind of love.
It's the love of art. Because I believe in art the way other people believe in god.
In art I've met an army of people - a tribe that gives good company and courage and hope. In books and painting and music and film. This book? It's for you. It's water I made a path through. I'm not speaking out of my asshole when I say this.
Come in. The water will hold you. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Each one of us can be an oasis of peace. ~ Desmond Tutu

I think water's, like, a really important thing. ~ Miley Cyrus

This wisdom sees water for water, earth for earth, fire for fire, and wind for wind. We are not surprised by change, and when it occurs, we can be like water and flow. When it is time to be solid like the earth, we can be steadfast. When the heat of enthusiasm is necessary, we are like the fire of all fires. We can blow with the wind of virtue, uplifting any situation. Or we can rest in space, accommodating everything. This is the power of a king or queen - the warrior of all warriors. ~ Sakyong Mipham

Four more times the Japanese strafed them, sending Louie into the water to kick and punch at the sharks until the bomber had passed. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

The oceans cover 65% of the globe's surface and, as there are up to 10 billion viruses per one litre of sea water, the whole ocean contains around 4 x 10 30 - enough, when laid side by side, to span 10 million light years. ~ Dorothy H. Crawford

I know she's just trying to make things nice, so I do my part. Now, when I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I turn on the light. I used to just go by sonar: just keep peeing 'til you hear water. ~ Adam Ferrara

Worship itself is made up of ordinary stuff. We use plain words. Some of the most the glorious words in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer are, well, common and plain enough to make you weep - "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us." We are baptized in plain water. We consume plain bread and wine. And it all is lifted up by plain people. ~ Tish Harrison Warren

In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color. The sharp edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the many separated lines a solid gray emerges. ~ John Steinbeck

The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same. You could still buy Slazenger tennis rackets, Tretorn balls, and Rossignol skis, Tyrolia bindings and Koflach boots. The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child's reality and an adult's, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn't, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

What's happening on the Colorado River is happening all over the world. The water is overused, overdammed, and it's polluted in some places. ~ Greg MacGillivray

Vel once told me that the heart isn't like a cup of water. You can't drain it. It's more like an endless well, and the more you love, the more it pumps out. ~ Ann Aguirre

For the sage
Heaven and Earth join
in bestowing the greatest gifts ~ Lao-Tzu

Little John: I would come too. He might want knocking in a stream to cool his anger.
Much: I will come too, to fish him out again, and to reassure him that not all of us have this queer craving for hurling folks in water. ~ Robin McKinley

Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face. ~ Fannie Flagg

I wonder whether, perhaps without realizing it, we seek out the books we need to read. Or whether books themselves, which are intelligent entities, detect their readers and catch their eye. In the end, every book is the I Ching. You pick it up, open it, and there it is, there you are. ~ Andres Neuman

The clouds, warm now, sun-spotted, sweep over the hills, leaving gold in the water, and gold on the necks of the swans. ~ Virginia Woolf

God is the water, and you are the faucet. ~ Marianne Williamson

The single most important duty of the federal government is to protect and defend our national sovereignty. There are new and disturbing reports of American nuclear submarines passing though Canadian waters without obtaining the permission of, or even notifying, the Canadian government. ~ Stephen Harper

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more. ~ William Shakespeare

I think the water dictates how food will taste in a country. In England the apples taste unlike apples grown in any other place. England is an island, there's a lot of salt in the air and in the water. I think that has something to do with it. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

There's water in my bones
a ghost of a chance ~ Michael Ondaatje

I started at a 'learn to swim' scheme when I was about five-years-old. I did it to learn water safety, but it was fun and I loved the water. I went to a club, moved up through the ranks and got better and better before taking part in my first national championships. ~ Liam Tancock

Percy muttered. 'I want to drown her.'
'Be patient, water boy.'
'Don't call me water boy. ~ Rick Riordan

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water ~ Raquel Cepeda

Creosote made Mandy think of the thrill of rushing through a garden sprinkler as a kid, of playing washer toss in the backyard, of spending nights in the neighbors' huge in-ground swimming pool when she was twelve, throwing glow sticks in the turquoise water during Canada Day block parties. She thought of Jud for a moment, how he'd loved doing all those things when he was a kid, but how, as he got older, it was all about popularity, sports, a life of illusion… and without warning, a totally different kind of memory filled her mind – the dull feeling of her head hitting the concrete walls near the wood shop at her old high school, the sounds of kids laughing, the sharp smell of sawdust, the buzzing of electric sanders nearby, the sound of Jud laughing while he beat her up… without realizing it, she'd started crying noiselessly. ~ Rebecca McNutt

The society, is, a dishwasher, where all the water, is, dead chipmunk blood. God I'm brilliant. ~ Thom Yorke

In the country whereto I go
I shall not see the face of my friend
Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;
Together we shall not find
The land on whose hills bends the new moon
In air traversed of birds.
What have I thought of love?
I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow."
I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendor
As a wind out of old time ...
But there is only the evening here,
And the sound of willows
Now and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.
from "Betrothed ~ Louise Bogan

Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it. ~ Oscar Wilde

Each of the five tribes claims to have been the victorious attacker. Each recalls the slaughter with relish. Each believes it was ordained by their own god as righteous vengeance, because of the unholy practices carried on in the city. Evil must be cleansed with blood, they say. On that day the blood ran like water, so afterwards it must have been very clean. ~ Margaret Atwood

Polish what you polish until it is like gold that has been refined a hundred times; anything that is done in a hurry is not deeply developed. Do what you do like a thousand-pound catapult; one who pops off too easily does not accomplish much. ~ Zicheng Hong

I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.

But the essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together. Every now and then we read that the chemicals which constitute the human body cost ninety-seven cents or ten dollars or some such figure; it is a little depressing to find our bodies valued so little. However, these estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made mostly of water, which costs almost nothing; the carbon is costed in the form of coal; the calcium in our bones as chalk; the nitrogen in our proteins as air (cheap also); the iron in our blood as rusty nails. If we did not know better, we might be tempted to take all the atoms that make us up, mix them together in a big container and stir. We can do this as much as we want. But in the end all we have is a tedious mixture of atoms. How could we have expected anything else? ~ Carl Sagan