“Ah, drink againThis river that is the taker-away of pain,And the giver-back of beauty!In these cool wavesWhat can be lost?--Only the sorry costOf the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself!The level flood that lavesThe hot browAnd the stiff shoulderIs at our temples now.Gone is the fever,But not into the river;Melted the frozen pride,But the tranquil tideRuns never the warmer for this,Never the colder.Immerse the dream.Drench the kiss.Dip the song in the stream.”

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

“It is never too late to go quietly to our lakes, rivers, oceans, even our small streams, and say to the sea gulls, the great blue herons, the bald eagles, the salmon, that we are sorry.”

“Love, being in love, isn’t a constant thing. It doesn’t always flow at the same strength. It’s not always like a river in flood. It’s more like the sea. It has tides, it ebbs and flows. The thing is, when love is real, whether it’s ebbing or flowing, it’s always there, it never goes away. And that’s the only proof you can have that it is real, and not just a crush or an infatuation or a passing fancy”

“Time is like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. You can never go back.”

“The time of the autumn floods came and the hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. … Then the Lord of the River was beside himself with Joy, believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone.”