84 Inspiring Water Quotes

Water, an essential element of life, has inspired thinkers, poets, and philosophers for centuries. Its fluid nature and transformative properties serve as powerful metaphors for change, resilience, and the flow of existence. Whether you find solace in the rhythmic crashing of ocean waves or the quiet tranquility of a still lake, water's presence is profoundly calming and reflective. In this collection, we have gathered 84 inspiring quotes that celebrate water's beauty, wisdom, and symbolic significance. Immerse yourself in these words and let them wash over you, refreshing your spirit and sparking contemplation.

1. “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” - John Lubbock

2. “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

3. “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),It's always our self we find in the sea.” - E.E. Cummings

4. “Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

5. “In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.” - Kahlil Gibran Jr.

6. “It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.” - Nicholas Sparks

7. “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

8. “Where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give.” - Jane Austen

9. “He wouldn't call a glass of water half full or half empty; he'd assume it was poisoned and run away. ” - Michael Reisman

10. “The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.Dare to breach the surface and sink.” - Vera Nazarian

11. “He was going to take a dive into this lake. He just didn’t know it. Cerise rose, finding footing in the soft mud. The water came up to just below her breasts and her wet shirt stuck to her body. William’s gaze snagged on her chest. Yep, keep looking, Lord Bill. Keeeeeep looking.” - Ilona Andrews

12. “Land and water are not really separate things, but they are separate words, and we perceive through words.” - David Rains Wallace

13. “Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.” - Alison McGhee

14. “When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light.” - Anne Spollen

15. “Life in us is like the water in a river.” - Henry David Thoreau

16. “Water is the driving force in nature.” - Leonardo da Vinci

17. “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

18. “The pale water which goes away along paths of silence.” - Georges Rodenbach

19. “It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

20. “You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.” - W.C. Fields

21. “Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.” - Wallace Stevens

22. “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

23. “High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.” - Mark Twain

24. “Always be like a water. Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface.” - Santosh Kalwar

25. “Water is sufficient...the spirit moves over water.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

26. “…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)” - Mark Nepo

27. “Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.” - Patrick Ness

28. “I will lose the habit of stars in the heavens, as frozen water loses the habit of snowflakes. I will take my frozen body, and give it to the young goats that they might graze it.” - Nichita Stanescu

29. “If the private life of the sea could ever be transposed onto paper, it would talk not about rivers or rain or glaciers or of molecules of oxygen and hydrogen, but of the millions of encounters its waters have shared with creatures of another nature.” - Federico Chini

30. “[...] I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day.” - Woody Allen

31. “Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.” - Steve Maraboli

32. “As for those who disbelieve, their deeds are like a mirage in a desert. The thirsty one thinks it to be water, until he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing, but he finds Allah with him, Who will pay him his due (Hell). And Allah is Swift in taking account.” - Anonymous

33. “A pool just isn't the same as the ocean. It has no energy. No life.” - Linda Gerber

34. “Underwater, bubbles erupted before my eyes as a swift hand snatched my arm and pulled me to the surface. I gasped for air, coughing and gagging at the amount of water I sucked into my lungs by pure shock. What was up with me and breathing in water? I needed to grow some gills or something.” - Laura Kreitzer

35. “An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.” - Criss Jami

36. “The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.” - Raymond Carver

37. “And there, on that road, that very minute, he started to play - the most lonesome music that them priests ever in their lives heard. It brought water out o' their teeth, so it did.” - Eddie Lenihan

38. “All water is holy water.” - Rajiv Joseph

39. “He stepped forward and took the butterfly hanging around my neck between his two fingers: “This will remind me, both of my mistake and how much I care for you.” He took another step closer so we were only inches apart, and his hand moved to the back of my shoulder where Shawn’s mark stillscarred my skin. “And I hope this will never heal. It will remind me to never take anything for granted; other people’s intentions, your safety, or . . . you.” - Terra Harmony

40. “Micah: “Come, on. Let’s get you out of here.” He began putting his arms under me and lifted me off my bed of rocks.“Oh, no. You can’t just come trotting in here like some hero. I’m saving myself this time. Go away!” “And let me just say you were doing a fine job lying there on your back.” - Terra Harmony

41. “Camels can go many weeks without drinking anything at all. The notion that they cache water in their humps is pure myth—their humps are made of fat, and water is stored in their body tissues. While other mammals draw water from bloodstreams when faced with dehydration, leading to death by volume shock, camels tap the water in their tissues, keeping their blood volume stable. Though this reduces the camel’s bulk, they can lose up to a third of their body weight with no ill effects, which they can replace astonishingly quickly, as they are able to drink up to forty gallons in a single watering.” (pp.69-70)” - Michael Benanav

42. “Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someone drowned. The same can be said of all good things which can be used well or used badly. But one must not attack them if fools abuse them.” - Christine de Pizan

43. “Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.” - Franny Billingsley

44. “It is rooted deep in your bones; the water calls out to you until it causes you physical pain unless you come to it.” - Nadia Scrieva

45. “In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.” - Joseph Conrad

46. “Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.” - Margaret Atwood

47. “… the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these black waters that contain the day that passed, the night to come. — Excerpt from the poem “The Mercy” - Philip Levine

48. “There definitely needs to be water on the sidelines for these players, but I also had some Gatorade just in case they were allergic to the water or vice versa.” - john madden

49. “When the water is calm, take as much distance as possible with your boat!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

50. “In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones.” - China Miéville

51. “If we come from the water, I conclude that we come from different kinds of it. I will meet a person and in his eyes see an ocean, deep and never ending; then I will meet another person and feel as though I have stepped into a shallow puddle on the street, there is nothing in it. Or maybe some of us come from the water, and some of us come from somewhere else; then it's all a matter of finding those who are the same as us.” - C. JoyBell C.

52. “Confidence is not a wilted plant that can be brought back to life with a bit of water. It is a highly flammable object. Doubt sets it aflame and destroys it irreparably.” - Michele Halberstadt

53. “For a moment, I almost felt sorry for her. Then the bitch blasted me with her water magic, and I got over it.” - Jennifer Estep

54. “She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.” - Raymond Chandler

55. “Please stop shaking your rain water in my direction. What next? Are you going to come over here, cock your leg and urinate upon my person?” - Stephen J. Day

56. “Praised be my Lord, for our sister water.St. Francis of Assisi,Canticle of the Sun” - St. Francis of Assisi Robin Weston

57. “You can bail water 24/7, and no matter how good you are at not sinking, you still have a hole in your boat.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

58. “I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.” - Peter Kreeft

59. “A mile below the lowest cloud, rock breaches water and the sea begins.It has been given many names. Each inlet and bay and stream has been classified as if it were discrete. But it is one thing, where borders are absurd. It fills the space between stones and sand, curling around coastlines and filling trenches between the continents.” - China Miéville

60. “The water is very green and has a sweet taste, both boys wrote in their diaries, at different times.” - Helen Oyeyemi

61. “It is chronic water shortage in the body that causes most diseases of the human body.Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj” - Masaru Emoto

62. “All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.” - Nathan Reese Maher

63. “I can’t help but ask, “Do you know where you are?”She turns to me with a foreboding glare. “Do you?” - Nathan Reese Maher

64. “Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.” - Nathan Reese Maher

65. “I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.” - Nathan Reese Maher

66. “She leaves my side and heads deeper intothe apartment singing, “—if the spirit tries to hide, its temple far away… acopper for those they ask, a diamond for those who stay.” - Nathan Reese Maher

67. “Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lostmemories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreamsplay when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?” - Nathan Reese Maher

68. “History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.” - Nathan Reese Maher

69. “To transform a grimace into a sound sounds impossible, yet it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light.” - Dejan Stojanovic

70. “Falling seemed to take forever as the water slowly rose to meet me. The dome of city hall continued to gleam in the distance, with its golden reflection extending to the river water. Strange that I hadn't seen that before.” - P.R. Mason

71. “There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul” - Sebastian Barry

72. “When you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread out, changing all the water in the pool. The ripples hit the shore and rebound, bumping into one another, breaking each other apart. In some small way, the pond is never the same again.” - Neal Shusterman

73. “Take the time to plant seeds even if you're unsure if they'll grow; who knows, maybe all it takes is for someone else to come along and water it.” - Kai Mann

74. “Never Forget Who You Are Beacause Its Like Forgetingg Water Is Wet,The Sun Is Bright,Snow Is Cold.Its Rudunent.” - Andrew Fukuda

75. “I am in love, and the river is beginning to ice over. I’d better go drown myself before I freeze to death.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

76. “Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.” - Hermann Hesse

77. “Vomit began to spill out of me like pea soup, splattering the road with champagne and caviar, long island iced teas, of bacon appetizers and croissants, and a perfectly grilled filet mignonette. It had gone down easy, among the kiss ups of the lawyer world, but spewed out nastily and hard, in the company of a cheater.” - Keira D. Skye

78. “Can the water in the valleys ever stop and rest?When the water finally reaches the sea, it becomes great waves.” - Francis Harold Cook

79. “If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.” - C.S. Lewis

80. “Too often our visions of the futureare dull and impotentlike a hammer beating the water.” - Harley King

81. “If truth prevails, the contributions of a courageous physician and a brilliant engineer to the conquest of waterborne disease will still be remembered in another hundred years.” - Michael J. McGuire

82. “It's only water," she said."Tell that to a drowning man," Giddon said.” - Kristin Cashore

83. “Maintaining one’s health in today’s toxic rich environment requires proper rest, hydration, an abundant intake of nutrients, and regular internal cleansing practices” - Gary Hopkins

84. “It is impossible to express the experiences you have below the surface with words, when water gently caresses your face and body, the pulse decreases and your brain relaxes. You are immediately cut off from the stress and hustle of everyday life when you are below the surface – there are no noisy telephones or SMS messages, no inboxes full of mail, no electrical bills, or other trivialities of everyday life taking up time and energy. There is nothing connecting you to the surface but the same withheld breath that connects you to life. There is only you and a growing pressure on your chest that feels like a loving hug and the vibrations from the deep quiet tone of the sea. It is quite possible that this deep quiet tone is none other than the mantra Om, the sound of the universe, trickling life into every cell of your body.” - Stig Åvall Severinsen