...all that is carried along
by the stream's silvery cascade,
rhythmically falling from the mountain,
carried by its own current — carried where?

There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream.

For all bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually.

I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, it’s gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...

Contemplando il rivestimento di merletto che i torrenti disegnano sulle montagne non si può non rammentare che ogni cosa fluisce, ogni cosa si muove verso un qualche punto, gli esseri viventi e le rocce così dette inanimate come l'acqua.
Fluisce la neve, rapida o lenta, nelle valanghe e nei ghiacciai creatori di bellezza; fluisce l'aria in maestose inondazioni che trasportano minerali e foglie, semi e spore, torrenti di musiche e di profumi; fluisce l'acqua trasportando rocce, in soluzione o in forma di fango, sabbia, ciottoli, sassi. Fluiscono le rocce dalla bocca dei vulcani, come acque dalle fonti e gli animali si raggruppano ed è tutto un fluire, un avanzare di zampe, di groppe in salto, d'ali spiegate, sulla terra, nell'aria, nel mare... E intanto le stelle corrono nello spazio spinte dal perenne pulsare, come globuli rossi nel caldo sangue della Natura.

The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life.

Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers. All is flux, nothing stays still.

The river is everywhere.

A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.

The rivers flow not past but through us.

Rivers perhaps are the only physical features of the world that are at their best from the air. Mountain ranges, no longer seen in profile, dwarf to anthills; seas lose their horizons; lakes have no longer depth but look like bright pennies on the earth's surface; forests become a thin impermanent film, a moss on the top of a wet stone, easily rubbed off. But rivers, which from the ground one usually sees only in cross sections, like a small sample of ribbon — rivers stretch out serenely ahead as far as the eye can reach. Rivers are seen in their true stature.

They tumble down mountain sides; they meander through flat farm lands. Valleys trail them; cities ride them; farms cling to them; roads and railroad tracks run after them — and they remain, permanent, possessive. Next to them, man's gleaming cement roads which he has built with such care look fragile as paper streamers thrown over the hills, easily blown away. Even the railroads seem only scratched in with pen-knife. But rivers have carved their way over the earth's face for centuries and they will stay.

The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.

The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past, — flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.