may the wind deal kindly with us
may the fire remember our names
may springs flow, rain fall again
may the land grow green, may it swallow our mistakes

– Diane Di Prima, from Life Chant

Water in its myriad forms has provided inspiration for countless spiritual teachers, writers, poets, artists, musicians, and all the rest of us. Here’s a page that’s not solely about the Ichetucknee but that we hope will inspire you and make you think. Enjoy!

Quotes from Writers With Florida Connections

Florida’s waters have inspired a long, vibrant tradition of environmental and nature writing that has unfolded from William Bartram in the 1700s through John Muir, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings up to Cynthia Barnett, Jack Davis and others today. Here are some quotes from writers with special connections to Florida.

Behold, for instance, a vast circular expanse before you, the waters of which are so extremely clear as to be absolutely diaphanous or transparent as the ether…This amazing and delightful scene, though real, appears at first but as a piece of excellent painting; there seems no medium; you imagine the picture to be within a few inches of your eyes, and that you may without the least difficulty touch any one of the fish, or put your finger upon the crocodile’s eye, when it really is twenty or thirty feet under water.

– William Bartram, Travels

Nature’s object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit—the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.

– John Muir, from the chapter “Cedar Keys” in A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

He went down to the spring in the cool darkness…A sharp pleasure came over him. This was a secret and a lovely place. A spring as clear as well water bubbled up from nowhere in the sand. It was as though the banks cupped green leafy hands to hold it. There was a whirlpool where the water rose from the earth. Grains of sand boiled in it…The water was so cold that for a moment it burned his skin. Then…it was entirely delicious.

– Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

We can walk, swim, float in the clearest shallows.
Upon us the welling up of the source,
Around us the gift of the river, the way we must go.

Our bodies delight in the flow of original life.

– Richard Eberhart, from the poem “Ichetucknee”in Florida Poems

Water was enchantment, certainly. But it was also deeply feared and honored, held close to the heart in both mystery and awe. It was sacred.

– Bill Belleville, writing about the Timucua who inhabited Florida at the time of Ponce de Leon in “Florida’s Deep Blue Destiny” from FORUM, the magazine of the Florida Humanities Council

The first nine months of our lives
we live in it.
It is our beginning
as it is the beginning of everything.
It is elemental.
Thus we desire to return to it.
Thus we hold it sacred…

We are most comfortable near it,
or beside it, or in it.
It is the greatest gift we have.
It is boundless.
It belongs to us.

– Janisse Ray, from the poem “Water” in A House of Branches

In a series of letters written in 1855 to his wife in New York, the historian George Bancroft referred to Florida as a “land of Fountains,” an appellative inspired by the state’s many freshwater springs. His contemporary and a travel writer from New York, Daniel F. Tyler expressed a common sentiment when he reported on his stay at Green Cove Springs, Florida: “You realize a moral, as well as a physical benefit, from this communion with the primitive world.” Writing home to his son in 18874, L.D. Huston said of Florida, “so far it is a perfect Eden—they tell me that it is about the same all year round, and if it is, then goodbye to the north.”

– Jack Davis, “The Despoliation of Florida’s Living Aesthetic” in Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida

The Suwanee is in no hurry,
has rocked all the humming afternoon.
Now she takes two yarns from the basket
at her side, and with long white needles
begins to knit. The low sun glints
on the tips of her flying. Across her
broad lap, something wonderful begins.

– Lola Haskins, from the poem“A Confluence” in Across Her Broad Lap Something Wonderful

I’d like enough of natural Florida to survive that we will always be able to see, feel, and taste the real thing.

– Al Burt, Tribute to Archie Carr

It is possible to help the springs. Join working groups, donate to the friends of the springs, make a loud and persistent voice for protecting the springs. Refuse to be silenced! … Map your own AQUIFERious world. Draw underwater, write, take photos, make art, explore and be inspired by the energy of the springs … Enter the springs—a joyful place and an incredible experience.

– Margaret Ross Tolbert, AQUIFERious

The springs I remember most vividly were the ones you traveled to down long, sand-track roads through dry pine hills. The first sign of something different was the dark green of a clump of broadleaf trees; then you saw the spring boil like a blue gem in its setting of green hammock, its water tumbling up out of its deep birthplace and roiling the surface with little prisms that sprayed color from the slanting light in the morning sun…The clarity of the water was absolute. You could watch a crayfish juggling a minnow forty feet down…

– Archie Carr, from “All the Way Down upon the Suwannee River” in A Naturalist in Florida: A Celebration of Eden

Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages…It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

– Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek

Other Inspirational Quotes About Water

The spring rose up from its deep source and smelled of wet earth and the stones at the center of the world. Whatever you believe, and whatever God you pray to, a place where clean water rises from the earth is in some way sacred.
– Charles Frazier

Access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right [and thus] is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.
– Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), from Laudato Sí, Paragraph 30

By means of water, we give life to everything.
–Koran, 21:30

I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water,and the parched ground into springs.
–Isaiah 41:18

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
– New Testament, James 3:12

When you drink water, remember the spring.
– Chinese Proverb

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
–Tao Te Ching, #78, translated by Stephen Mitchell

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
– American Indian Saying

Filthy water cannot be washed.
– West African Proverb

Our bodies are molded rivers.
– Novalis

Help all sentient beings, the mountains, the trees and the rivers.
– His Holiness the 17^th Gyalwa Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje, Tibetan Buddhist

Pure water is the world’s first and foremost medicine.
– Slovakian Proverb

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
– Loren Eiseley, American anthropologist

You don’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry.
– William Bell, American singer/songwriter

By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole.
– Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright/essayist/poet/dissident/politician

may the wind deal kindly with us
may the fire remember our names
may springs flow, rain fall again
may the land grow green, may it swallow our mistakes
– Diane Di Prima, from Life Chant

Gentle Goddess,
who never asks for anything at all,
and gives us everything we have,
thank you for this sweet water,
and your fragrance.
– Lew Welch, “Prayer to a Mountain Spring” from Ring of Bone

Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
– St. Francis of Assisi

The sun and the stars, the valley and hill,
the rivers and lakes all disclose Your presence.
– Jewish Prayer

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it ….
– Gary Snyder (after a Mohawk prayer)

Deep Peace of the running wave to you,
of water flowing, rising and falling,
sometimes advancing, sometimes receding…
May the stream of your life flow unimpeded!
Deep peace of the running wave to you!
– Mary Rogers, adapted from the Gaelic

Water flows over these hands.
May I use them skillfully
to preserve our precious planet.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

The supreme good is like water,
Which nourishes all things without trying to.
–Tao Te Ching, #8, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Where water is boss, the land must obey.
– Yoruba proverb

Water no get enemy.
– Fela Kuti

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
– W. H. Auden

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.
– Rachel Carson

There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
– Sylvia Alice Earle

If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
– Margaret Atwood

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.
– Ovid

Water is compulsive; it draws each of us to gaze transfixed in a becalmed state which few other things induce so forcibly.
– Mirabel Osler

If you stain clear water with filth, you will never find a drink.
– Aeschylus

People who live
by rivers
dream
they are immortal.
– Audre Lorde

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
– Brooks Atkinson

Water its living strength first shows,
When obstacles its course oppose.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Waters, you are the ones who bring us the life force. Help us to find nourishment so that we may look upon great joy.
– from the Rigveda

Water is H₂O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.
– D. H. Lawrence

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
– Plautus

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
– Claude Monet

Water is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul.
– John of Damascus

Till taught by pain,
Men really know not what good water’s worth.
– Lord Byron

He knows the water best who has waded through it.
– Danish proverb

The history of the land has been written very largely in water.
– John Hodgdon Bradley, Jr.

To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
– Huangbo Xiyun

I am not deeply versed in physical science, but there are certain things about water that fill me with wonder and amaze.
– H. G. Wells

Too often, where we need water we find guns.
– Ban Ki-moon

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
– Toni Morrison

Water in motion is precise and sharp, clearly formed, holding specific postures for infinitely small frozen moments.
– Gary Snyder

There’s always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.
– Don Delillo

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.
– Zadie Smith

Water is the first principle of everything.
– Thales of Miletus

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor, canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.
– Ludwig Feuerbach

Spit not in the well; you may have to drink its water.
– French proverb

The waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.
– Izaak Walton