The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.
Water is a commodity not by any means to be found everywhere...When found, it is more than likely to be bad, being either from a bitter alkaline pool, or from a hole in a creek, so muddy that it can only be called liquid by courtesy.
Highest good is like water. Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes closest to the way.
Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?
The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears: But yet It is our trick; nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will: when these are gone, The woman will be out. — Adieu, my lord! I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, But that this folly drowns it.