Quotes & Sayings About Flowing Like Water

A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy. — Alan Watts

Like flowing water, money and possessions are less useful when they're hoarded. — Elizabeth George

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. — Vicki Harrison

Like standing in a creek with the water flowing against your legs, you know? — Daniel H. Wilson

Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up - it might leave a scar, but then life is flowing, and like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend, because each experience teaches us a lesson. Keep blasting because life is such that sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is not. — Bruce Lee

One of the cardinal features of the Buddha's teaching is that all life, however solid it may seem to be, and all things, however separate they may seem to be, are in a state of flux. That is to say that the world we live in doesn't consist so much of things or entities as it consists of process. Everything is in a constant state of flowing pattern. By way of illustration you might say that it's something like the flowing pattern you see when you look at smoke: a dancing, constantly changing arabesque of pattern; flowing, flowing, all the time. Or that the substance of life is something like water, which I can hold in my hand so long as I cup it gently, but if I clutch at the water, I immediately lose it. — Alan W. Watts

Our lives are like water, always flowing forward in the streams of time. When we encounter what is unexpected, our best choice is to flow around the obstacle. — Ryan Kirk

When your heart's gratitude comes to the fore, when you become all gratitude, this gratitude is like a flow, a flow of consciousness. When your consciousness is flowing, feel that this gratitude-flow is like a river that is watering the root of the tree and the tree itself. It is always through gratitude that your consciousness-river will grow and water the perfection-tree inside you. — Sri Chinmoy

I am struck with incredible force by this proof that sight is like a hand that tries to seize flowing water. Yes, our eyes may perceive, yet they do not observe; they may believe, yet they do not question; they may receive yet they do not search: they are emptied of desire, with neither hunger nor passion. — Muriel Barbery

Anger is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human. — C. JoyBell C.

Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them: Now — J.R.R. Tolkien

Life moved, as inconstant and fickle as Wind Baby, frolicking, sleeping, weeping, but never truly still. Never solid or finished. Always like water flowing from one place to the next. Seed and fruit. Rain and drought, everything traveled in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something new. But we rarely saw it. Humans tended to see only frozen moments, not the flow of things. — Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it. And those are the ones who shone. The rest - "unknown, unasked-for" a minute after death. What is "eternal" fame? Emptiness. Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring. — Marcus Aurelius

Most of our body is made of water, and we should aspire to be more like waters middle state. Seek not to be rigid, cold, and unchanging like ice, nor like water vapor with no direction or substance. Instead we should seek to be like that of flowing water; fluid, dynamic, able to float heavy burdens with ease, changing course with gentle guidance and adaptable. — Peter Arvo

11 The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. — Anonymous

For those poor souls who can only think of the terrible fear and danger of a runaway horse, think of this: a speed like water flowing over stone, a skimming sensation that hovers and dips while the world spins around and the wind drags your skin taut across your bones. You can close your eyes and lose yourself in the rhythm, because nothing you do or shout or wish for will happen until the running makes up its mind to stop. So you hold steady, balancing yourself in the wake, and unhook your mind from the everyday while you sit at the silent center of it all and hope that the feeling won't stop till you're good and ready for life to be ordinary once more. — Meg Rosoff

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome. — Jerry Seinfeld

Through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration. Although I still had little language — Eben Alexander

Like all who are impassioned, I take blissful delight in losing myself, in fully experiencing the thrill of surrender. And so I often write with no desire to think, in an externalized reverie, letting the words cuddle me like a baby in their arms. They form sentences with no meaning, flowing softly like water I can feel, a forgetful stream whose ripples mingle and undefine, becoming other, still other ripples, and still again other. Thus ideas and images, throbbing with expressiveness, pass through me in resounding processions of pale silks on which imagination shimmers like moonlight, dappled and indefinite. — Fernando Pessoa

Gary tried not to notice how pale Savannah was as she fixed him a pot of coffee.Her satin skin was almost translucent.He was groggy from the trance-induced sleep and had a hard time waking up, even after a long shower. He had no idea where the change of clothes had come from,but they were lying on the end of the bed when he awakened.
Savannah was beautiful, moving through the house like flowing water, like music in the air.She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a pale turquoise shirt that clung to her curves and emphasized her narrow rib cage and small waist.Her long hair was pulled back in a thick braid that hung below her bottom.Gary tried to keep his eyes to himself.He hadn't seen any evidence of Gregori this evening,but he didn't want to take any chances.He had a feeling the one thing that could change that remote expression fast was to have another man ogling Savannah. — Christine Feehan

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel
Covered with old gray for buzzing flies
Eye like mango flowing orange pus
Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep
Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta
Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats
Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts
Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys
Always pissing yellow Hooghly water
Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles
Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer
Nose smell a big gray Bidi
Heart bumping and crashing over tramcar tracks
Covered with a hat of cloudy iron
Suffering water buffalo head lowered
To pull the huge cart of year uphill — Allen Ginsberg

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. — Arthur Golden

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight ...
[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells ... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of
meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Go out and find some real people. Listen to their stories. Don't ask for the main point. Let the story run its course. Like flowing water, it will find its own way, at its own pace. And if you've got patience, you'll learn more than you might imagine. - T — Bernadette Jiwa

Christ is like a river in another respect. A river is continually flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually, so that a man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; he is continually supplying his people, and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ, may have fresh supplies from him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end. — Jonathan Edwards

Swlmmlng After swallowing some water at Changsha I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li. I see the entire Chu sky. Wind batters me, waves hit me-I don't care. Better than walking lazily in the patio. Today I have a lot of time. Here on the river the Master said "Dying-dying into the past-is like a river flowing." — Mao Zedong

Time," he said solemnly, "is comparable to a river flowing under a layer of ice. It stretches us out like water weeds, from root to tip, from birth to death, curled around whatever rocks or snags happen to lie in our path; and no one can get out of the river because of the ice roof, and no one can turn back against the current for an instant. — Tim Powers

People tend to be like flowing water; taking the path of least resistance, what they often forget is that water can cut through mountains. — E.S. Quinton

Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear. — Peter Elbow

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

Most of what I want simply slips away like water flowing through a net, and always what remains are only vague, elusive fragments of images ... that sink into countless strata in my mind. — Daido Moriyama

The vow of silence, that's the mind-blower. See, talking is what I do ... i t's a real need with me, a craving, I'm like a word junkie. I never shut up. I talk to myself, I talk in my sleep. The idea of voluntarily turning off that tap, I can't imagine it It'd be like, I don't know, all the rivers in the world just slammed to a stop. No churning, no flowing, no white water, just stillness, crushing stillness. I don't think I could stand it, locked up like that in my own psyche. I'd collapse into myself, I'd implode — Andrew Schneider

Sometimes I wonder what my interior actually is. A heart that goes pitter-patter and thoughts that glide by like little paper boats on flowing water, — Orhan Pamuk

At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn form the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. — Elizabeth Bishop

He sometimes behaves like water, flowing around the obstacles he encounters. — Paulo Coelho

A people believe in a god' - she completes the circle -' and the god tells them what to believe. It's a cycle, like water flowing into the ocean, then up to the skies, and into rain, which falls and flows into the ocean. But it is different in that ideas have weight. They have momentum. Once an idea starts, it spreads and grows and gets heavier and heavier until it can't be resisted, even by the Divine. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o'er the dim weeping dawn

As to Josie's side I returned at last,

And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov'd best

Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!

While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years

Seem'd mingling their voices with the moaning flood:

Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,

My true love's shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kiss'd the cold, cruel mist

Into dancing show'rs of diamond dew,

And the dark flowing stream laugh'd back to his beam,

And the lark soared aloft in the blue:

While no phantom of night but a form of delight

Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,

And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast

Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy. — Amy Harmon

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion... — Jeremy Wade

The love of God toward you is like the Amazon River flowing down to water a single daisy. — F.B. Meyer

I tell you the truth - for a long, long time these farmers have worked like horses and cattle; and like horses and cattle they have died. The reason our religion has penetrated this territory like water flowing into dry earth is that it has given this group of people a human warmth they never previously knew. For the first time they have met men who treated them like human beings. It was the human kindness and charity of the fathers that touched their hearts. — Shusaku Endo

I closed my eyes and heard the wind and the sound of water flowing softly, swiftly in the river. It was enough, for one moment. And I knew that it would not endure, that it would fly away from me like something torn out of my arms, and I would fly after it, more desperately lonely than any creature under God, to get it back. — Anne Rice

There's Carol like a rolling car, And Martin like a flying bird, And Adam like the Lord's First Word, And Raymond like the Harvest Moon, And Peter like a piper's tune, And Alan like the flowing on Of water. And there's John, like John. — Eleanor Farjeon

Its good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing. — Rumi

Flowing water makes men meditative. They urinate with a sense of eternity like sailors. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The water's always changing, always flowing. But people, I guess, can't live like that — Pocahontas

Song

This is the love I bring,
Absolute and nothing:
A tree but with no roots,
A cloud heavy with fruit,
A wide stone stair
That leads nowhere
But to empty sky,
Ambiguous majesty.

This is the love I bear:
It is light as air,
Yet weighs like an earth;
It is water flowing,
Yet adamant as fire.
It is coming from going.
It is dying and growing.

A love so rare and hard
It cuts a diamond word
Upon the windowpane,
"Never, never again,
Never upon my breast,"
Having no time to bring,
Having no place to rest,
Absolute and nothing. — May Sarton

And I feel like the Queen of Water. I feel like water that transforms from a flowing river to a tranquil lake to a powerful waterfall to a freshwater spring to a meandering creek to a salty sea to raindrops gentle on your face to hard, stinging hail to frost on a mountaintop, and back to a river again. — Maria Virginia Farinango

Influence is like water. Always flowing somewhere. — Gary Hamel

We swam in sunshine and in rain; we swam in the morning, when the sea was sluggish as soup, we swam at night, the water flowing over our arms like undulations of black satin; one afternoon we stayed in the water during a thunderstorm, and a fork of lightning struck the surface of the sea so closer to us we heard the crackle of it and smelt the burnt air. — John Banville

An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song's sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words. — Boris Pasternak

Some phrases just have a nice ring to them, y'know? Like, "The water sprite goes flowing down the river." Or, "Ahh, spring." "It's totally autumn." "Drop dead." "Stiff roundhouse kick." Or, "Thick soy broth." See? — Eiichiro Oda

The snow here hadn't thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time. — Vasily Grossman

He showed me the river of living water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Revelation 22:1 — Beth Moore

Techniques employ four qualities that reflect the nature of our world. Depending on the circumstance, you should be: hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth-flowing like water, or as empty as space. — Morihei Ueshiba

Far worse, though, was a low, powerful moaning at dusk. The wind off the sea and the odd interior stillness dulled our ability to gauge direction, so that the sound seemed to infiltrate the black water that soaked the cypress trees. This water was so dark we could see our faces in it, and it never stirred, set like glass, reflecting the beards of gray moss that smothered the cypress trees. If you looked out through these areas, toward the ocean, all you saw was the black water, the gray of the cypress trunks, and the constant, motionless rain of moss flowing down. All you heard was the low moaning. The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you. As — Jeff VanderMeer

Understanding is like water flowing in a stream. Wisdom and knowledge are solid and can block our understanding — Thich Nhat Hanh

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green. — Thomas Carlyle

They were walking beside the stream and the Lion went before them: and he became so beautiful, and the music so despairing, that Jill did not know which of them it was that filled her eyes with tears.
Then Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. — C.S. Lewis

Flowing water is at once a picture and a music, which causes to flow at the same time from my brain, like a limpid and murmuring rivulet, sweet thoughts, charming reveries, and melancholy remembrances. — Alphonse Karr

Time is a topological manifold. It is a surface. Events flow across it like water over land and like water flowing over land, when the land is flat, the water becomes reflective and moves slowly. When the landscape becomes disrupted, the water moves faster and chaotic attractors appear and new kinds of activity emerge and out of that new activity, there comes the new states that define the future. — Terence McKenna

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing. — Omar Khayyam

The corridor was still empty of all the feet in sad generations seeking water. yet the eyes unseeing clenched like teeth not disbelieving doubting even the absence of pain shin ankle knee the long invisible flowing of the stair-railing where a misstep in the darkness filled with sleeping Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury door I am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury geting so far ahead sleeping I will sleep fast when I door Door door It was empty too, the pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the throne of contemplation. — William Faulkner

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male and female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish. — Francesca Lia Block