Classic Water Quotes

• "A man may well bring a horse to the water, but he cannot make him drink." - John Heywood "The Proverbs of John Heywood" (1546)
  

• "Blood is thicker than water." - English Proverb (17th Century)
  

• "Like a fish out of water." - Latin Saying
  

• "Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm." - Malaysian Proverb (possibly also relevant of today's water industry!)
  

• "Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  

• "The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey. By diligent effort, I learned to like it." - Sir Winston Churchill
  

• "You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." - R.Tagore
  

• "Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet." - African proverb
  

• "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided." - Exodus 14
  

• "Water the soul of the earth" - Robert A Swanson
  

• "Good old days: Beer foamed and drinking water didn't." - Unknown
  

Life Related Quotes

• "The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you." Brendan Behan
  

• "Millions have lived without love. None has lived without water." Turkish Businessman, 1998
  

• "A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water." - Sidney Goff
  

• "When you are in deep water, it's a good idea to keep your mouth shut." - St Louis Tribune
  

• "Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land. So the little minutes, humble though they be, Make the mighty ages of eternity." - Julia A. Fletcher
  

• "Drink to me. Drink to my health" - Pablo Picasso
  

• "For ages I thought life was like fishing in a swimming pool. Now the water's all drained out!" - ?
  

• "Beware of a silent dog and still water." - German Proverb
  

• "Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is." - D.H. Lawrence
  

• "For real company and friendship, there is nothing outside of the animal kingdom that is comparable to a river." - Henry Van Dyke
  

Political Related Quotes

• "The settlements protect the wells. It's all about water." - Moshe Dayan on the West Bank Jewish settlements
  

• "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." - Fisher Ames
  

• "The dam is more important than the forest. Any fool can see that." - Dr Mahatir on Sabah dam protests
  

• "Let the Franklin flow, let the wild run free" - Shane Howard's anti-dam song "Let The Franklin Flow"
  

• "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." - Leonardo da Vinci
  

• "People born to be hanged are safe in water." - Mark Twain
  

• "The Bangladeshi Government sets the water safety level at 50 parts per million, despite the World Health Organization's recommendation that contamination levels should not exceed 10 parts per million." - BBC on arsenic level
  

• "The Pak Mon Dam affects but a handful of people." - Thai Prime Minister on 20,000 displaced villagers
  

• "And ecosystems are ever changed, more by the cumulative deeds of good men doing what they believe than by the rapacious actions of Green demonology." Marq de Villiers, Water, 1999
  

• "This is the largest dam in the world and will supply millions with water for drinking, irrigation and industry while producing the most electricity of any power station on the planet. It will be a wonder of the world" - Li Peng, NPC Chairman on the Three Gorges Dam project
  

• "Despite such a massive media campaign, one-third of delegates still did not vote in favour of the project. Such opposition was unprecedented in communist China. It should make the people in charge think carefully." - Li Rui, former Water Resources Minister commenting on NPC 1,767 for, 177 against and 644 abstention for Three Gorges Dam project
  

• "The majority of delegates are not fully informed of the technical aspects of the project. So no matter how we vote, we vote in blindness.” - Xang Xi-Ren, Jilin provincial minister on same Three Gorges Dam vote issue
  

• "When we could spend obscene amounts on weapons of death and destruction when just a minute fraction of those budgets of death would ensure that God's children everywhere would have clean water, adequate health care, enough to eat, a decent home and education. It is wonderful that Dr. Martin Luther King was so passionate in his opposition to war and so zealous for peace." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
  

• "Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta." - Brian Aldiss
  

• "Work is the curse of the drinking class." - Oscar Wilde
  

Scientific (maybe) Quotes

• "The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." - John Gardner
  

• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." Dan Quayle
  

• "It takes a lot less cold water to make a hot bath cold than it takes hot water to make a cold bath hot." - Kevin McCallum
  

• "Human beings were invented by water as a means of transporting itself from one place to another." - Tom Robbins
  

• "The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it contracts, it squeezes out into the wells whatever heat it holds." - Lucretius (99 B.C.-55 B.C.. Rome)
  

• "Imagine this: vehicles powered by water!" - Jules Verne
  

• "For best results: wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm iron. For not so good results: drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on roofrack." Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET (Korea)
  

• "My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) Everybody drinks water." - Mark Twain
  

Various Other Quotes

• "Ice Water? Get some Onions - that'll make your eyes water!" - Groucho Marx
  

• "A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him." - William Lyon Phelps
  

• "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him walk on it." - Gary Larson
  

• "You can tke a horse to water but a banana must be bent. " - Bananabob
  

• "Dreaming is not an accident. It is not a wistful idea you hope will come true. Dreaming is not the stuff of long-haired hippies wistfulling running along a beach. No, dreaming is a sophisticated tool used by the elite of our society to make themselves and this world a better place. People like Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, Warren Buffet, Col. Sanders and Walt Disney all started with a dream. The dreams started small but like the water that formed the great Grand Canyon, dreams are POWERFUL!" - Conway Stone
  

• "False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction." - Cesare Beccaria
  

• "Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. - Mark Twain
  

• "A woman is like a teabag. You don't know her strength until she's in hot water." - Nancy Regan
  

• "Gardening requires lots of water -- most of it in the form of perspiration." - Lou Erickson
  

• "Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst." - Walter Weckler
  

• "It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys." - Baroness Orczy
  

• "The latest fad, giving birth under water, may be less traumatic for the baby, but it's more traumatic for the other people in the pool." - Elayne Boosler
  

• "The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water." - Anon
  

• "The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg; nine-tenths of him is under water." - Thornton Wilder
  

• "Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar!" -Pablo Picasso
  

• "The Devil craps on the big pile" - Albert Einstein
  

• "Now, as you all know, there is nothing a cat dislikes so much as water; just watch your kitty shake her paws daintily when she steps into a puddle, and see how disgusted she is if a drop of water falls on her nose and back." - Agnes A. Sandham
  

• "Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water." - W. C. Fields
  

• "My heart is filled with joy when I see you here, as the brooks fill with water when the snow melts in the spring" - Ten Bears, Comanche Chief
  

• "The cat Bastet sat perched on the rim of the tub, watching me through slitted golden eyes. She was fascinated by baths. I suppose total immersion in water must have seemed to her a peculiar method of cleansing oneself." - Elizabeth Peters
  

• "Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
  

• "Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." - Sir J. Lubbock
  

• "Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender." - Mary Buckley
  

• "I come like Water, and like Wind I go." - Edward Fitzgerald
  

• "I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean." - G. K. Chesterton
  

• "I drink no more than a sponge." - Francis Rabelais
  

• "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." Mel Brooks
  

• "Ninety percent of everything is crap." - Theodore Sturgeon
  

Email Water Recycle Group Australia with your quotes!