Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'Creation and Redemption: The Great Sacrifice'. Collected in C Devlin (ed)  The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1959), ch.8.

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain'or 'train'do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance.It is nothing jointed; it flows. A'river'or a 'stream'are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

-James,William
  The Principles of Psychology, ch.9. This is the coining of the phrase'stream of consciousness', later applied to the narrative technique used by Joyce and others.

   Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

-Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich
  Press conference, NewYork, Oct.

Moulmein is situated up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through South America.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  From Sea to Sea.

But the river remains unchanged, sad, refusing rehabilitation.

-Kirkup,James
  'No More Hiroshimas'.

The widening river's slow presence, The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud, Gathers to the surprise of a large town: Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water, And residents from raw estates.

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  Of Hull.'Here'.

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

-Leonardo daVinci
Notebooks. Quoted in Vincent Cronin The Flowering of the Renaissance (1969).

O the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters Of the River Lee.

-Mahony, Francis Sylvester pseudonym Father Prout
'The Bells of Shandon'.

As I look ahead, I am filled with much foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see'the RiverTiber foaming with much blood'.

-Powell, (John) Enoch
  Speech at Birmingham on racial tension in Britain, Apr.

He turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many- chorded lyre† W.G. discovered batting; he turned its many narrow straight channels into one great winding river.

-Ranjitsinhji, Prince
  Of W G Grace.TheJubilee Book of Cricket.

   Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and for ever!

-Scott, Sir Walter
  The Lady of the Lake, canto 3, stanza16,'Coronach'.

He that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Evan Dhu Maccombich to EdwardWaverley.Waverley, ch.18.

The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things, bya law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'Love and Philosophy'.

The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria Nyanza, and as I had foretold, that lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.

-Speke,John Hanning
  Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile.

Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with the stars to see, Bread I dip in the riverö There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.1,'TheVagabond', stanza1.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.11, stanza1.

'In about half a mile you cross the river by an Irish bridgeö' 'Whatever is that?' 'It'sjust a bridge, but built under thewater instead ofover it.' 'Extremely sensible.'

-Stewart,John Innes Mackintosh
  A FamilyAffair.

On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.1, l.1^5.

Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.1, l.28^32.

   O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever.

-Tennyson
  The Princess, pt.4, added song, stanza 3.