“Everybody is as unstable as water.”

—  Joseph Heller , book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Everybody is as unstable as water." by Joseph Heller?
Joseph Heller photo
Joseph Heller 132
American author 1923–1999

Related quotes

Mark Twain photo

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Zadie Smith photo

“Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

Source: White Teeth (2000)
Context: You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

E. B. White photo

“The planet holds out no such inducement. The planet is everybody's. All it offers is the grass, the sky, the water, the ineluctable dream of peace and fruition.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Intimations" (December 1941)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Context: Before you can be an internationalist you have first to be a naturalist and feel the ground under you making a whole circle. It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members. A club, moreover, or a nation, has a most attractive offer to make: it offers the right to be exclusive. There are not many of us who are physically constituted to resist this strange delight, this nourishing privilege. It is at the bottom of all fraternities, societies, orders. It is at the bottom of most trouble. The planet holds out no such inducement. The planet is everybody's. All it offers is the grass, the sky, the water, the ineluctable dream of peace and fruition.

Jami photo

“Heart is not free from love pain
Painless body is only soil and water
Everybody vecomes lover
O, there is no leveless heart in the worls.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Joseph and Zuleika, p. 78
Poetry, Poetry from Joseph and Zuleika

James Baldwin photo
Ogden Nash photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Jean-Michel Cousteau photo

Related topics