As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.
So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
In the beginning, compassion is like the seed without which we cannot have any fruit; in the middle, compassion is like water to nourish the see we have planted; in the end, compassion is like the warmth of the sun that brings the fruit to ripening.
You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
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.