Quotes about fountain
page 2

Horace photo

“To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.”
Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 309

George William Russell photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Gildas photo

“[Description of Britain] Its plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of refreshing water.”
[Descriptio Britanniae] Campis late pansis collibusque amoeno situ locatis, praepollenti culturae aptis, montibus alternandis animalium pastibus maxime covenientibus, quorum diversorum colorum flores humanis gressibus pulsati non indecentem ceu picturam eisdem imprimebant, electa veluti sponsa monilibus diversis ornata, fontibus lucidis crebris undis niveas veluti glareas pellentibus, pernitidisque rivis leni murmure serpentibus ipsorumque in ripis accubantibus suavis soporis pignus praetendentibus, et lacubus frigidum aquae torrentem vivae exundantibus irrigua.

Section 3.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

John Keats photo
George Holmes Howison photo
William James photo
Herman Cain photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo

“Wealth is the fountain head of passions.”

Nahj al-Balagha

John Stuart Mill photo
Isaac Barrow photo

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Sammy Cahn photo

“Three coins in a fountain
Each one seeking happiness
Thrown by three hopeful lovers
Which one will the fountain bless?”

Sammy Cahn (1913–1993) American lyricist, songwriter, musician

Three Coins in a Fountain (1954)
Song lyrics

J. Proctor Knott photo

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

John Adams photo
Sophia Loren photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
Werner von Siemens photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Aurangzeb photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Daniel Webster photo
Henry More photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas to Augusta (1816), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Banville photo
Björk photo
Edmund Clarence Stedman photo
Isaac Barrow photo

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Lorin Morgan-Richards photo

“The fountain of youth resides in our memory. You will never outlive your shadow.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

as quoted in Barry GEM "Barry GEM" http://www.barry-today.co.uk/article.cfm?id=102602&headline=Book%20on%20the%20trail%20of%20%20the%20Welsh%20Americans&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2016 "Book on the trail of the Welsh Americans” (20 January 2016).

Alexander Maclaren photo
James Montgomery photo

“Bliss in possession will not last;
Remembered joys are never past;
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were, they are, they yet shall be.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

The Little Cloud.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Constable photo

“And however one's mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originally must spring — and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature he must soon form a manner, & be reduced to the same deplorable situation as the French painter mentioned by Sir J. Reynolds, who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out.For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if really executed by other men….. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make some laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

3 quotes in Constable's letter to John Dunthorne (29 May 1802), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 2, pp. 31-32
1800s - 1810s

Robert Southey photo

“From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For a while, till it sleeps
In its own little lake.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 2.
The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

Gerhard Richter photo
Alexander Hamilton photo
André Maurois photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
William Wordsworth photo
Robert E. Howard photo

“I'm not going to vote. I won't vote for a Catholic and I won't vote for a damned Republican. Maybe I've said that before. My ancestors were all Catholic and not very far back. And I have reason to hate the church.
I feel a curious kinship, though, with the Middle Ages. I have been more successful in selling tales laid in that period of time, than in any other. Truth it was an epoch for strange writers. Witches and werewolves, alchemists and necromancers, haunted the brains of those strange savage people, barbaric children that they were, and the only thing which was never believed was the truth. Those sons of the old pagan tribes were wrought upon by priest and monk, and they brought all their demons from their mythology and accepted all the demons of the new creed also, turning their old gods into devils. The slight knowledge which filtered through the monastaries from the ancient sources of decayed Greece and fallen Rome, was so distorted and perverted that by the time it reached the people, it resembled some monstrous legend. And the vague minded savages further garbed it in heathen garments. Oh, a brave time, by Satan! Any smooth rogue could swindle his way through life, as he can today, but then there was pageantry and high illusion and vanity, and the beloved tinsel of glory without which life is not worth living.
I hate the devotees of great wealth but I enjoy seeing the splendor that wealth can buy. And if I were wealthy, I'd live in a place with marble walls and marble floors, lapis lazulis ceilings and cloth-of-gold and I would have silver fountains in the courts, flinging an everlasting sheen of sparkling water in the air. Soft low music should breathe forever through the rooms and slim tigerish girls should glide through on softly falling feet, serving all the wants of me and my guests; girls with white bare limbs like molten gold and soft dreamy eyes.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (received October 20, 1928)
Letters

“If we are to prove that Fox really struck a jet of living water, we ourselves must tap that same fountain.”

Rufus M. Jones (1863–1948) American writer

As quoted in Living in the Light : Some Quaker Pioneers of the 20th Century Vol. I, (1984) by Leonard Stout Kenworthy, p. 126

John Townsend Trowbridge photo
George Holmes Howison photo
John Muir photo

“Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirletters/id/9847/show/9846 to Catharine Merrill, from New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley (9 June 1872); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 9: Persons and Problems
1870s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Neil Peart photo

“Life is just a candle, and a dream must give it flame…
-- The Fountain of Lamneth (1975)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Daniel Webster photo
Joseph Priestley photo
William Wordsworth photo
George Moore (novelist) photo

“The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it… you and you alone make me feel that I am alive… Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Letter to Lady Emerald Cunard, quoted in The Everything Wedding Vows Book : Anything and Everything You Could Possibly Say at the Altar, and then Some. (2001) by Janet Anastasio and Michelle Bevilacqua, p. 97.

Thomas Kyd photo
James Hamilton photo
Lord Randolph Churchill photo
Joshua Reynolds photo

“Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 6; vol. 1, p. 162.
Discourses on Art

Taliesin photo

“There are three fountains
In the mountain of roses,
There is a Caer of defence
Under the ocean’s wave.
Illusive greeter,
What is the porter’s name?”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The First Address of Taliesin

Euripidés photo

“The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards.”

Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 409

Octavio Paz photo

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

James Hamilton photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST : TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Passage on Muhammad by an anonymous author in The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (1830), edited by Joseph Blunt, Ch. X, p. 269. Robert Spencerattributed the authorship to Adams in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (2005), p. 83, but provided no clear documentation as to why this attribution was made.
Disputed

Edward Everett photo

“Those who do not find a fountain through which to pour their tears, do not cry.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

No llora quien no encuentra uns fuente donde verter su llanto.
Voces (1943)

Jean Cocteau photo

“A film is a petrified fountain of thought.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Esquire magazine (February 1961)

“Regeneration is the fountain; sanctification is the river (in deeper or shallower degree). 'Entire sanctification' is the river in fullest flow.”

J. Sidlow Baxter (1903–1999) Australian theologian

Divine Healing of the Body (1979), p. 287.

Walter Scott photo

“Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto III, stanza 16 (Coronach, stanza 3).
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

John Rupert Firth photo

“Strictly speaking, the grammatical method of resolving a sentence into parts is nothing but a fanciful procedure; but it is the real fountain of all knowledge, since it led to the invention of writing.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: The tongues of men. 1937, p. 15; As cited in: Angela Senis (2016) , " The contribution of John Rupert Firth to the history of linguistics and the rejection of the phoneme theory http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/014-senis.pdf." Proceedings of ConSOLE XXIII 273.

W. H. Auden photo

“Over the mountains,
And over the waves,
Over the fountains,
And under the graves;
Over the floods that are deepest,
Which do Neptune obey;
Over the rocks that are steepest,
Love will find out the way.”

"Love Will Find Out the Way"; in its published form this is suspected to have been extensively written by Percy himself; it was later used by Pierre de Beaumarchais in Act III of The Marriage of Figaro (1778).
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)

Eleanor Farjeon photo

“My harp and I a-wandering
Went over Snowdon Mountain,
From Anglesey to Swansea Bay
It sang like any fountain.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

The Welsh Harp
More Nursery Rhymes of London Town (1917)

Gottfried Leibniz photo
John Muir photo
William Morris photo
Helen Keller photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

New England Reformers
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

James Beattie photo
John Eardley Wilmot photo
John Muir photo
Jonathan Stroud photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Tobin Bell photo
Michael Longley photo

“By definition, if prose is a river, poetry is a fountain.”

Michael Longley (1939) poet

'Poetry Ireland Review' Summer 1999

Torquato Tasso photo

“You, Honor, you first veiled
The fountains of delight,
Denying those waves to the thirsting lovers.”

Tu prima, Onor, velasti
La fonte dei diletti,
Negando l'onde a l'amorosa sete.
Act I, Choro, line 358.
Aminta (1573)

David Mushet photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

As quoted in his obituary, in the New York Times, 24 September, 1939
Attributed from posthumous publications

William Blake photo

“The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 35

Ambrose Bierce photo

“Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 369

Thomas Carlyle photo
Eleanor Farjeon photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Kent Hovind photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo

“For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power and the canon law.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

1896
September
The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible
Free Thought Magazine
Chicago
14
542
http://books.google.com/books?id=TfOfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA542&dq=%22for+fifty+years+the+women%22

Lucretius photo

“In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.”
Medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book IV, lines 1133–1134 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
Variant translation: From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.
Compare: "Still from the fount of joy's delicious springs / Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I, stanza 82
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Aga Khan III photo

“Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)
Context: Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, is nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain.