Rivers Quotes

• A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.

  Laura Gilpin

  Moving, Rain, Memorable

  124 Copy quote

• Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

  A. A. Milne

  Inspirational, Life, Patience

  88 Copy quote

• To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.

  Barry Lopez

  Nature, Hands, Water

  69 Copy quote

• True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.

  E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

  Positive, Meaningful, Humility

  11 Copy quote

• Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Inspiration, Rocks, Addiction

  17 Copy quote

• Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

  A. A. Milne

  Life, Meaningful, Native American

  65 Copy quote

• What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.

  Hal Boyle

  Memorable, People, Doubt

  77 Copy quote

• If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

  Loren Eiseley

  Garden, Lakes, Water

  The Immense Journey "The Flow of the River" (1957)

  263 Copy quote

  Show source

• Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

  Norman Maclean

  Running, Fishing, Water

  "A River Runs Through It" (1976)

  493 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soul, a moving river. Body, the riverbed.

  Rumi

  Moving, Soul, Body

  9 Copy quote

• Rivers flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.

  John Muir

  Memorable, Past, Cells

  11 Copy quote
• 

  No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

  Heraclitus

  Change, Journey, Men

  154 Copy quote

• I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

  Edward Abbey

  Stars, Memorable, Night

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.140, University of Arizona Press

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself

  Maya Angelou

  Women, Spirit, Harmony

  568 Copy quote

• Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

  John Lubbock

  Education, Teacher, Nature

  "The Use of Life" by John Lubbock, (Ch. IV), 1894.

  82 Copy quote

  Show source

• In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Life, Time, Water

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.258, OUP Oxford

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Water, Paddling, Treasure

  "New Jersey v. New York, et al., 283 U.S. 336, 342". Judicial opinion, 1931.

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane.

  Libba Bray

  Mother, Strong, Disappointment

  Libba Bray (2015). “The Gemma Doyle Trilogy”, p.337, Delacorte Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

  Langston Hughes

  Sleep, Sunset, New Orleans

  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" l. 1 (1921)

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Rain, Water, Earth Day

  Benjamin Franklin (1998). “Benjamin Franklin Wit and Wisdom”, p.53, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

  115 Copy quote

  Show source

• There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

  Desmond Tutu

  Fall, People, Needs

  348 Copy quote

• Love is a river. Drink from it.

  Rumi

  Love, Spiritual, Nature

  15 Copy quote

• Time flows away like the water in the river.

  Confucius

  Life, Water, Flow

  15 Copy quote

• Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Mountain, Flow

  23 Copy quote

• The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Running

  30 Copy quote