“in truth man is polluted river. one must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled.”

“In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled. I bring you the Superman! He is that sea; in him your great contempt can be submerged.”

“One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”

“A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.”

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”

“It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.”