Top 72 Water Poetry Quotes
#1. Pictures painted with water. Poetry breathed between kisses. Too beautiful to last.
Ally Condie
#2. A poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind.
James Stephens
#3. Old pond - frogs jumped in - sound of water
Basho Matsuo
#4. You touched my heart...ever so softly
and I realized
tears had never been...merely salt
and the rain
Oh the Rain!
had never been merely water.
Sanober Khan
#5. Sturdy swimmers afloat on water-couch
Beneath the heavy bill their treasured pouch
Fishes pray for them to fly far away
Inland lakes toast to the Pelican's day
Munia Khan
#6. Little deer, I've stuffed all the world's diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.
Pascale Petit
#7. why do people pour water on concrete expecting something to grow from it" AP
Alexis Pettway
#8. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leathery covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hands like a fish.
Francesca Lia Block
#9. Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way.
Baisao
#10. In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
Christina Rossetti
#11. ... when your palm laced like water
on a cheek of mine, a finger raiding
each contour by oath, we both knew
that in growing up, some signs had to be
sought behind closed doors, and upon discovery,
remain beyond the doors we wrought as ransom.
Jerrold Yam
#12. Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte. (More recent poets put a lot of water in the ink.)
Goethe: Aus Makariens Archiv. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. III 18
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#14. By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea,
From there the wind comes and blows over the world,
By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea,
From there the clouds come and rain falls over the world.
Jane Bierhorst
#15. I know you don't think that any tongue I speak is mine; it must be rented. I am always denial, or pretense. A child born mid-flight has no nation. I can pull on either culture, but they always melt like a dream, trickle away, water on the oiled pelt of foreign.
Jasmine Ann Cooray
#16. The touched heart madly stirs,
your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles -
every gesture is a proclamation,
every sound is speech ...
Sappho
#17. (My dove my little one
tonight there will be wine and drunken suitors
from the logging camps to pin you down
in the outlying lands of sleep
where all roads lead back to the home-village
and water may be walked on)
Al Purdy
#18. Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#19. A 21st century poet is a woman who can speak her mind and stand upright like a mountain with her convictions, but can adapt like water in an ever changing season without losing her genuine elements.
Roseville Nidea
#20. Sleeping Atlantis
Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within...
Muse
#21. Here they have no time for the fine graces
of poetry, unless it freely grows
in deep compulsion, like water in the well,
woven into the texture of the soil
in a strong pattern.
Iain Crichton Smith
#22. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping ... I hear it in the deep heart's core.
W.B.Yeats
#24. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
Edgar Allan Poe
#26. Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
Janet Fitch
#27. And if the world has forgotten you,
say this to the stable earth: I run.
Tell the rushing water: I exist.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#28. It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival.
Criss Jami
#29. Poetry's packaged as a late-night slot, a quote minority taste unquote, like water-skiing or goat-fucking or something.
Julian Barnes
#30. Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave.
Patrick Rothfuss
#31. And me happiest when I compose poems:
Love, power, the huzza of battle
are something, are much:
yet a poem includes them like a pool
water and reflection.
Irving Layton
#32. And you're a tall drink of water because we're so fucking thirsty
Andrew Faulkner
#33. The Water said to the dirty one, "Come here."
The dirty one said, "I am too ashamed."
The water replied, "How will your shame be washed away without me?
Rumi
#34. Maybe when water yearned for fire / it invented waves / so one day they might become flames
Ibrahim Nasrallah
#35. Went looking for faith on the forest floor, and it showed up everywhere. In the sun, and the water, and the falling leaves, the falling leaves of time.
Neil Young
#36. FLESH
I drop my wedding ring
in holy water.
I hope it repels;
the years
of hate
and hope,
so I can finally relate
to the son we made.
Jessica Bell
#37. The Bane
... where coxswain's dirt
and seaman's shirts
brushed bawdily upon her chest ...
Muse
#38. My poems are like a dagger Sprouting flowers from the hilt; My poetry is like a fountain Sprinkling streams of coral water.
Jose Marti
#39. Do not turn me
into
restless waters
if you cannot promise
to be my stream.
Sanober Khan
#40. Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give.
Ted Hughes
#41. Water is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
Birds, by the snow.
Emily Dickinson
#42. But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!
Robert Graves
#43. You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
Virginia Woolf
#44. There's a path from me to you
I'm constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.
Rumi
#45. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.
Karl French
#46. 229. I am writing all this down in blue ink, so as to remember that all words, not just some, are written in water.
Maggie Nelson
#47. 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
#48. If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water,
You would drown when I said
I love you.
Spike Milligan
#50. The River Swish
Deftly maneuvered through
the dark green abyss ~
The wooden raft seemed
in tune with this ~
Canorous rush of the
river swish....
Muse
#51. Landscape is my religion.
... God in a green legend, I lean over the pool
In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood
Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches
And floored with a skin of water.
Norman MacCaig
#52. My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. 'Listen,' he said, 'life and no escape.
Anne Carson
#53. From the shoulders, slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry.
Calvin fell to his knees.
"No," Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs. Whatsit's voice. "Not to me Calvin. Never to me. Stand up.
Madeleine L'Engle
#54. Some say, don't burn your bridges.
I say, if necessary,
let the kerosene
kiss it on the lips,
and watch it
turn to ash.
There's always more than one way
to cross the water.
Rudy Francisco
#55. The Net
I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.
Sara Teasdale
#56. So the physicality of that and the just the sheer lack of urban noise and machinery - just the wind, the water and your breath, you know that kind of thing - it was pure poetry and you know I treasure that.
DJ Spooky
#57. The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.
George Orwell
#58. Over the water of time I call to you
In a language I do not know.
Ellen S. Jaffe
#59. i am soft again.
there is water and it surrounds me.
there is feeling and i can feel it.
i am awake and alive
and swollen and heavy with love.
i am changing
and i am loving change.
AVA.
#60. Your job is to abide in my pasture
Eating sweet grass and drinking pure water,
And sharing both with others -
That is a lamb's business.
Jessica Coupe
#61. Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.
Carl Sandburg
#62. my dear,
we are all made of water.
it's okay to rage. sometimes
it's okay to rest. to recede.
Sanober Khan
#63. A poem makes clear without making simple. Poetry's language carries what lives outside language. It's as if you were given a 5-gallon bucket with 10 gallons of water in it. Mysterious thirsts are answered. That alchemical bucket carries secrets also, even the ones we keep from ourselves.
Jane Hirshfield
#64. Water the fruit trees, and don't water the thorns. Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and God's luminous reason-light. Don't honor what causes dysentry and knotted up tumors.
Coleman Barks
#65. unrequited love is like
kneeling on uncooked rice
and waiting for
the boiling water
of his kisses
to soften the pain
but he never comes.
K.Y. Robinson
#66. The ocean-blue bowl won't
refuse to bruise, won't hold it back
from the gaping earth-wounds.
There will still come
water, chill wind and happy
goosebumps,
and in the utmost corners of oaks,
leaves laughing.
Bryana Johnson
#67. Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
Wallace Stevens
#68. Zoe let the poetry flow over her, like shadows on water, sunlight against stone: timeworn words shaped like stars, like shells, like the ruins of lost temples, soft as the breaths of mystics.
Christine Brodien-Jones
#69. Tranquil breeze
Glittering beach
Dancing water
Bluest sky
My mind flies high with joyful laughter.
Debasish Mridha
#70. Let me begin again as a speck
of dust caught in the night winds
sweeping out to sea. Let me begin
this time knowing the world is
salt water and dark clouds, the world
is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn
comes slowly, and changes nothing.
Philip Levine
#71. What is more beautiful than a sea of water with a number of white-winged boats skirting its surface? Poetry and beauty contesting with the wind and the waves!
George Matthew Adams
#72. She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.
Theodore Roethke
