Scarce Water

Famous quotes containing the words scarce and/or water:

    Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
    A sheephook, or have learn’d ought else the least
    That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
    What recks it them? What need they? They are sped.
    And when they list their lean and flashy songs
    Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,
    The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)