Fumbling silence in the White House seeps out over the country like a cold fog over a river bed where no stream runs.

-Acheson, Dean Gooderham
  Letter to Harry S  Truman, 28 May, alluding to the Eisenhower administration. Quoted in David S McLellan and David C  Acheson (eds)  Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Gooderham  Acheson (1980).

   A painted meadow, or a purling stream.

-Addison,Joseph
  A Letter from Italy.

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam; Where the salt weed sways in the stream.

-Arnold, Matthew
  The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'The Forsaken Merman', l.35^8.

Crossing the striplingThames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 32 As the slow punt swings round.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.74^6.

Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

-Blake,William
  Songs of Innocence,'The Lamb'.

Fish say, they have their stream and pond; But is there anything beyond?

-Brooke, Rupert Chawner
  'Heaven'.

And thries hadde she been at Jerusalem; She hadde passed manya straunge strem; At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne, In Galice at Seint-Jame, and at Coloigne.

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Canterbury  Tales,'General Prologue', l.463^6.

He seems to paint with tinted steam.

-Constable,John
Of Turner. Quoted in Treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum (1982).

   He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce, And loved to stop beside the opening sluice; Where the small stream, confined in narrow bound, Ran with a dull, unvaried, sad'ning sound; Where all presented to the eye or ear, Oppressed the soul! with misery, grief, and fear.

-Crabbe, George
  The Borough, letter 22,'Peter Grimes', l.194^9.

The last bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas Loped under wires that span the mountain stream. Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream.

-Crane, (Harold) Hart
  The Bridge,'The River'.

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

-Denham, SirJohn
  Of the Thames. Cooper's Hill, l.189^92.

And sad,Oh sad, that glen with one thin stream He met his death in; and a farmer told me There was but one small bird to shoot: it sang 'Better Beast and know your end, and die Than Man with murderous angels in his head.'

-Devlin, Denis
c.1956  'The Tomb of Michael Collins'.

You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy.O glorious to be a human boy!† O running stream of sparkling joy To be a soaring human boy!

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Rev Mr Chadband. Bleak House, ch.19.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort or the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

-Empson, Sir William
  'Missing Dates'.

   It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in. The tribute of the current to the source.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'West-Running Brook'.

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.

You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.

-James,William
  Pragmatism, lecture 2.

Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end thaninthemidst, and intheendmore than in the beginning; for through the midst the stream bears us.

-Jonson, Ben
Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise.But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation.When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
  The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy! A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.

-Lowell,James Russell
  'An Interview with Miles Standish', stanza11.