Quotes4study

If we could shrink the Earth’s 5.7 billion population to a village of one hundred people, the resulting profile would look like this: Sixty Asians, fourteen Africans, twelve Europeans, eight Latin Americans, five from the United States and Canada, and one from New Zealand or Australia. Eighty-two would be nonwhite. Sixty-seven would be non-Christian. Thirty-two percent of the entire world’s wealth would be in the hands of five people. All five people would be citizens of the United States. Sixty-seven would be unable to read. Fifty would suffer from malnutrition. Thirty-three would be without access to a safe water supply. Eighty would live in substandard housing. Thirty-nine would lack access to improved sanitation. Twenty-four would not have electricity. Only one would have a college education.30

Leonard Sweet

Happiness is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm.

_Arliss' Lit. Col._

I was ripped out of the water and thrown and smashed into a thousand pieces that I can’t put back together. I don’t know where they go. And there are so many missing that the ones that are left don’t fit together anymore.

Katja Millay

Parents' blessings can neither be drowned in water nor consumed in fire.

Proverb.

Drinking water neither makes a man sick nor in debt, nor his wife a widow.

_John Neal._

The earth is not the centre of the orbit of the sun, nor the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements and united with them; and if any one were to stand on the moon when the moon and the sun are beneath us, our earth, with its element of water, would appear and shine for him just as the moon appears and shines for us.

Leonardo da Vinci     Thoughts on Art and Life

Fleur d'eau=--Level with the water.

French.

Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled.

_Hitopadesa._

Chi vuol dell' acqua chiara, vada alla fonte=--He who wants the water pure must go to the spring-head.

_It. Pr._

You can't tie water down. Watern can be difficult to love too, because it moves around anything trying to contain it. It can overflow its banks and lose its sense of home.

Katie Kacvinsky

Ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 3._

He was so good he would pour rose-water on a toad.

DOUGLAS JERROLD. 1803-1857.     _A Charitable Man._

I say that the first thing which should be learnt is the mechanism of the limbs, and when this knowledge has been acquired their actions should come next, according to the external circumstances of man, and thirdly the composition of subjects, which should be taken from natural actions, made fortuitously according to circumstances; and pay attention to them in the streets and public places and fields, and note them with a brief indication of outlines; that is to say, for a head make an O, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and body; and when thou returnest home work out these notes in a complete form. The adversary says that to acquire practice and to do a great deal of work, it is better that the first course of study should be employed in copying diverse compositions done on paper or on walls by various masters, and that thus rapidity of practice and a good method is acquired; to which I reply that this method will be good if it is based on works which are well composed by competent masters; and since such masters are so rare that but few of them are to be found, it is safer to go to nature, than to what to its deterioration is imitated from nature, and to fall into bad habits, since he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-vessel.

Leonardo da Vinci     Thoughts on Art and Life

Le vesciche galleggiano sopre aqua, mentre le cose di peso vanno al fondo=--Bladders swim on the surface of the water, while things of weight sink to the bottom.

_It. Pr._

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Great warmth at first is the certain ruin of every great achievement. Doth not water, although ever so cool, moisten the earth?

_Hitopadesa._

The lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.

_Emerson._

Hoc erat in votis; modus agri non ita magnus; / Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus juris aqu? fons, / Et paulum silv? super his foret=--This was ever my chief prayer: a piece of ground not too large, with a garden, and a spring of never-failing water near my house, and a little woodland besides.

Horace.

The earth hath bubbles as the water has, And these are of them.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 3._

True. But understand at least your incapacity to believe, since your reason leads you to belief and yet you cannot believe. Labour then to convince yourself, not by increase of the proofs of God, but by the diminution of your passions. You would fain arrive at faith, but know not the way; you would heal yourself of unbelief, and you ask remedies for it. Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but who now stake all that they possess; these are they who know the way you would follow, who are cured of a disease of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began, by making believe that they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Thus you will naturally be brought to believe, and will lose your acuteness.--But that is just what I fear.--Why? what have you to lose?

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore may be won; She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved. What, man! more water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of; and easy it is Of a cut loaf to steal a shive.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Titus Andronicus. Act ii. Sc. 1._

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.

GEORGE CHAPMAN. 1557-1634.     _Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. Act iii. Sc. 1._

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol (first published on this date in 1843

And so it was on that day. As the people prepared to pass over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant moved forward. As their feet touched the water of the Jordan, the waters that ran from upstream began to pile up. It was as though a huge dam had been built and the waters could go no farther. The people grew silent, and Caleb, who stood beside Joshua, said, “It reminds me of when God made a path through the Red Sea.” “That was a miracle in its day, but this is a miracle for us now.

Gilbert Morris

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Rabindranath Tagore

Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas=--Let me skim the water with one oar, and with the other touch the sands, _i.e._, so as not to go out of my depth.

Unknown

Hydrostatics is not a "dismal science," because water does not always seek the lowest level--e.g. from a bottle turned upside down, if there is a cork in the neck!

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Bruce Lee

You just have to be careful with Momma for a while," Teo told me. "She's broken. Like a jug with a broken handle that you try to glue back together. It looks all right, and it'll still hold water. It's still a good jug. But you better not ever try to pick it up by the handle. You have to wait for the glue to dry, and even then it might not hold.

Elizabeth Wein

What do you mean they dried up the river? It’s still there, isn’t it?” “It’s still there, but our spies reported what happened. We’ve been keeping track of them. The whole nation gathered on the far side of the Jordan, and then their priests headed for the river. It was a flood tide. It’s the time of year, sire.” “I know what time of year it is! What happened?” “As their priests’ feet came to the water, the river…well, it backed up. It was like an invisible dam was built upstream, and it held the waters back until all the people were across. Then, I suppose, their magicians took the spell off so the waters came rushing back into the river’s channel.” “The spies were drunk!” “No, they were reliable, King Jokab. They all agreed on what happened. Sire, these are mighty men, and more than that, they have a powerful god. I’m not a diplomat, but let me counsel you. Make peace with these people.

Gilbert Morris

A drop of water has all the properties of water, but it cannot exhibit a storm.

_Emerson._

We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we're pretty sure

that it wasn't a fish.

Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, / In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua=--What a woman says to an ardent lover ought to be written on the winds and the swiftly flowing water.

Catullus.

In asking for temporal blessings, true wisdom lies in putting the matter into the Lord's hand, and leaving it there. He knows our sorrows, and, if He sees it is good for us that the water should be turned into wine, He will do it. It is not for us to dictate: He sees what is best for us. When we ask for prosperity, perhaps the thing which we should have is trial. When we want to be relieved of a "thorn in the flesh," He knows what we should have is an apprehension of the fact that His grace is sufficient for us. So we are put into His school, and have to learn the lessons He has to teach us.--_W. Hay Aitken._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Every one draws the water to his own mill.

Proverb.

There are three material things, not only useful, but essential, to life--pure air, water, and earth; and three immaterial that are equally essential--admiration, hope, and love.

_Ruskin._

Praise a fool, and you water his folly.

Proverb.

You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?

Jodi Picoult

Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness. It casts a cloud over the mind, and renders it more occupied about the evil which disquiets it than about the means of removing it.

_Feltham._

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet, across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

H. G. Wells

"Fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water'" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (born 13 May 1937

Two pots stood by a river, one of brass, the other of clay; the water carried them away; the earthen vessel kept aloof from the other.

_L'Estrange._

Where the streame runneth smoothest, the water is deepest.

RICHARD HOOKER. 1553-1600.     _Euphues and his England, page 287._

>Water, water everywhere, / And all the boards did shrink, / Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.

_Coleridge._

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power, that is all.

_Holmes._

We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again.

_Bible._

The position of the beds which constitute the coal-measures is infinitely diverse. Sometimes they are tilted up vertically, sometimes they are horizontal, sometimes curved into great basins; sometimes they come to the surface, sometimes they are covered up by thousands of feet of rock. But, whatever then-present position, there is abundant and conclusive evidence that every under-clay was once a surface soil. Not only do carbonized root-fibres frequently abound in these under-clays; but the stools of trees, the trunks of which are broken off and confounded with the bed of coal, have been repeatedly found passing into radiating roots, still embedded in the under-clay. On many parts of the coast of England, what are commonly known as "submarine forests" are to be seen at low water. They consist, for the most part, of short stools of oak, beech, and fir-trees, still fixed by their long roots in the bed of blue clay in which they originally grew. If one of these submarine forest beds should be gradually depressed and covered up by new deposits, it would present just the same characters as an under-clay of the coal, if the _Sigillaria_ and _Lepidodendron_ of the ancient world were substituted for the oak, or the beech, of our own times.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

Sin in the soul is like Jonah in the ship. It turns the smoothest water into a tempestuous sea.--_Selected._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

If you will go to the banks of a little stream, and watch the flies that come to bathe in it, you will notice that, while they plunge their _bodies_ into the water, they keep their _wings_ high out of the water; and, after swimming about a little while, they fly away with their wings unwet through the sunny air. Now, that is the lesson for us. Here we are immersed in the cares and business of the world; but let us keep the wings of our soul, our faith and our love, out of the world, that, with these unclogged, we may be ready to take our flight to heaven.--_J. Inglis._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does.

PLUTARCH. 46(?)-120(?) A. D.     _Which are the most crafty, Water or Land Animals? 7._

Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression; and there are vague ways of speaking that are truer than strict facts would be. When the Psalmist said, "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law," he did not state the fact but he stated a truth deeper than fact and truer.

_Dean Alford._

He will not impose upon you one needless burden. He will not exact more than He knows your strength will bear. He will ask no Peter to come to Him on the water, unless He impart at the same time strength and support on the unstable waves. He will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or to withdraw the stone if too heavy. But neither at the same time will He admit as an impossibility that which, as a free and responsible agent, it is in your power to avert. He will not regard as your misfortune what is your crime.--_Macduff._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

To my mind there appears to be no sort of necessary theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. On the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity. Let me illustrate my case by analogy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows. Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action; and we might have two schools of clock-theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

The water which flows in a river moves either because it is summoned or driven, or because it moves of its own accord. If it is summoned,--and I mean sought after,--who is the seeker? If it is driven, who is the driver? If it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning; and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness.

Leonardo da Vinci     Thoughts on Art and Life

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. There are simply a sun, flowers, water, and love.

_Heine._

Little drops of water, little grains of sand, / Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land. / Thus the little minutes, humble though they be, / Make the mighty ages of eternity.

_F. S. Osgood._

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _1 Timothy v. 23._

Whether you boil snow or pound it, you can have but water of it.

Proverb.

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Joseph Stalin

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent.

George F. Kennan

Most of the water, however, did not run into the wall, but down it, because water, like cowardice and lust, always finds the lowest level.

Jo Nesbø

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden under ground, secretly making the ground green; it flows and flows, it joins itself with other veins and veinlets; one day it will start forth as a visible perennial well.

_Carlyle._

The conscious water saw its god and blushed.

_Dryden, on the water into wine at Cana._

Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

_Bible._

Truth will be uppermost one time or another like cork, though kept down in the water.

_Sir W. Temple._

The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.

Rabindranath Tagore

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the spirit= (of death, that is, and of life), =he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

_Jesus._

If water stagnates long it becomes foul.

John Wortabet     Arabian Wisdom

For the boy on the bridge. And for all the boys for a hundred generations who drop their lines into the swift dark water to catch the leviathans lurking in the deep: These are the secrets.

Rick Yancey

>Water cannot rise above the level from which it springs; no more can moral theories.

_J. C. Sharp._

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.... Its unity is only phenomenal.

_Emerson._

>Water is that which is given to supply vital moisture to this arid earth; and the cause which propels it through its ramifications against the natural course of weighty matter is the same which stirs the humours in every kind of animal body.

Leonardo da Vinci     Thoughts on Art and Life

It is notorious that, to the unthinking mass of mankind, nine-tenths of the facts of fife do not suggest the relation of cause and effect; and they practically deny the existence of any such relation by attributing them to chance. Few gamblers but would stare if they were told that the falling of a die on a particular face is as much the effect of a definite cause as the fact of its falling; it is a proverb that "the wind bloweth where it listeth"; and even thoughtful men usually receive with surprise the suggestion, that the form of the crest of every wave that breaks, wind-driven, on the sea-shore, and the direction of every particle of foam that flies before the gale, are the exact effects of definite causes; and, as such, must be capable of being determined, deductively, from the laws of motion and the properties of air and water. So again, there are large numbers of highly intelligent persons who rather pride themselves on their fixed belief that our volitions have no cause; or that the will causes itself, which is either the same thing, or a contradiction in terms.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate;" and the water, put nought in in malice.

DOUGLAS JERROLD. 1803-1857.     _Shakespeare Grog._

Our bounty, like a drop of water, disappears when diffused too widely.

_Goldsmith._

Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water on thy choler.

_Merry Wives_, ii. 3.

When poor men make requests of us we usually answer them as the echo does the voice--the answer cuts off half the petition. We shall seldom find among men Jael's courtesy, giving milk to those that ask water, except it be as this was, an entangling benefit, the better to introduce a mischief. There are not many Naamans among us, that, when you beg of them one talent, will force you to take two; but God's answer to our prayers is like a multiplying glass, which renders the request much greater in the answer than it was in the prayer.--_Bishop Reynolds._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

The stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.

OLD TESTAMENT.     _Isaiah iii. 1._

Alienos agros irrigas tuis sitientibus=--You water the fields of others, while your own are parched.

Proverb.

But even in my life I saw the leaching of spirit. A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength. Light, warmth, food, water, were free to all men, and gained by a minimum of effort. So the people of Ampridatvir, released from toil, gave increasing attention to faddishness, perversity, and the occult.

Jack Vance

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.

_Cervantes._

_Bereschist Rabba_ on Ps. xxxv.: "Lord, all my bones shall bless thee, who deliverest the poor from the tyrant." And is there a greater tyrant than the evil leaven? And on Proverbs xxv., "If thine enemy be hungry, feed him." That is to say, if the evil leaven hunger, give him the bread of wisdom of which speaks Prov. ix., and if he be thirsty, give him the water of which speaks Isaiah lv.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Blood is thicker than water.

Proverb.

Happiness doats on her work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities.--_Landor._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

The barge she sat in, like a burnishd throne, burnd on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggard all description

Enobarbus" on Cleapatra, in Antony and Cleopatra Act II sc. ii by William Shakespeare

And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!"

PLUTARCH. 46(?)-120(?) A. D.     _Pleasure not attainable according to Epicurus. 11._

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

Haruki Murakami

Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades.

PLUTARCH. 46(?)-120(?) A. D.     _Symposiacs. Book. viii. Question ix._

A sound is produced by the movement of the air in friction against a dense body, and should it be produced by two weighty bodies it is owing to the atmosphere which surrounds them, and this friction consumes the bodies, so that it follows that the spheres in their friction, owing to there being no atmosphere between them, do not generate sound. And if this friction were a fact, during the many centuries the spheres have revolved they would be consumed by the immense velocity expended daily; and even if they produce sound, the sound could not travel, {160} because the sound caused by percussion under water is scarcely noticeable, and it would be less than noticeable in the case of dense bodies. The friction of polished bodies produces no sound, and similar result would be produced in the contact or friction of the spheres; and if the spheres are not polished in their contact and friction, it follows that they are rough.

Leonardo da Vinci     Thoughts on Art and Life

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