"Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning."

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

"Rivers know this: There is no hurry.
We shall get there someday."

A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh, 1926

"Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939

"From the heart of the mighty mountains strong-souled for my fate I came, my far-drawn track to a nameless sea through a land without a name; I stayed not, I could not linger; patient, resistless, alone, I hewed the trail of my destiny deep in the hindering stone."

Sharlot Hall, Song of the Colorado, 1910

"Go softly by that river side, Or when you would depart, You'll find its every winding tied And knotted round your heart."

Rudyard Kipling, The Prairie, 1896

"My soul is full of longing

For the secret of the Sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea, 1850

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water.

Be water, my friend."

Bruce Lee, Longstreet, 1971 television series

"Sail Forth-Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring.
I with thee and thou with me.
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all."

Walt Whitman, Passage to India, 1871

"And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!” “By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. . . . “It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.”

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908

"At the end of the day on the water, I usually end up with at least a small pile of other people’s trash, fishing line and old lures. I’m out there a lot and I always see a lot of trash along the banks and in the water and I always pick up what I can. I hate to see the negligence from fellow anglers... make sure you take care of your old line, lures and trash when you’re out fishin’ ... and if you see someone else’s stuff, pick it up and throw it away."

Billy Strings, Bluegrass virtuoso, “Happy Earth Day, People,” 2021

"We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things."

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River Journal entry on August 13, 1869

"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy."

Edward Abbey, The Hidden Canyon — A River Journey, 1999

"I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me."

Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West. 1969 collection of essays

"You swam in a river of chance and coincidence.

You clung to the happiest accidents — the rest you let float by."

David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, 2008

"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 can never die."

Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, 1820

"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 Carney, Little Things, 1881