135 Quotes About River And Streams For Perfect Photo Captions

Looking for inspirational quotes about rivers? Well, you are in the right place. Rivers and streams are an indispensable part of our lives, and no matter where we travel, we will meet them – gorgeous gifts of nature that captivate our hearts and souls with their mystic charm. Whether you want some best river quotes to use them as photo captions or you are looking for flowing river quotes to describe the rivers beautifully through the best words, you got it covered.

Find some inspiration among these quotes about rivers, and enjoy how poetically some of these renowned authors, thinkers, and poets have captured the essence of this bounty of nature.

BEST QUOTES ABOUT RIVERS AND STREAMS

Check out this list below for the best quotes about rivers, where the beauty of a river is compared to many things, from the body of a human to dreams or the flow of thoughts. They say that life flows like a river, and these thoughtful and wise words tell us how.

If you are looking for amazing words to describe the rivers and streams, check these famous river quotes.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

“A river seems a magic thing. Magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.” ― Laura Gilpin

“The river in front of her was black. She thought it contained many things.” ― Gisele Prassinos

“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” – Hal Boyle

“When the river meets the ocean, the memories of the river meet the memories of the ocean. These two different worlds have many stories to tell each other!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” – A.A. Milne

They say time is like a river, and this quote about river illustrates that.

“The river teaches us many things, but its most important teaching is this: Whatever is happening around you, you keep flowing to your own destination following your own way!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Despite the ferocity of the current, a river is always moving but it’s always in the same place. And much like a river, while we should surge forward with great ferocity, our principles should never move.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“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 da Vinci

“The river asked me who I was to be gazing so longingly into her curving body of cascading dreams and shifting beauty.” ― Todd Crawshaw

”You can’t be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.” – Jim Harrison

BEAUTIFUL RIVER QUOTES

“The hard path is often the right one. The river teaches more than the shore.” ― Maxime Lagacé

“She was the river, and the river had nothing to be ashamed of.” ― Rachel Hartman

“The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.” – Herman Hesse

“To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.” – Barry Lopez

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.” ― Hermann Hesse

“The headlong stream is termed violent. But the river bed hemming it in is termed violent by no one.” ― Bertolt Brecht

“We call everything a river here. We are that kind of people.” ― Richard Brautigan

“May the river of love always flow from its own lap.” ― Suman Pokhrel

“As watercourse is replaced by a watercourse, So no river allows itself to be concealed. It breaks the channel in which it was hidden.” ― Miriam Lichtheim

“A river never wants to turn into a lake! And a person who likes to flow like a river never wants to be something stagnant like a lake!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” – John O’Donohue

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

“Love, like a river, will cut a new path whenever it meets an obstacle.” – Crystal Middlemas

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” – Loren Eiseley

“When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

FUNNY QUOTES ABOUT RIVERS

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.” ― Brian Andreas

“You can’t argue with a river – it is going to flow. You can dam it up, put it for useful purposes, you can deflect it, but you can’t argue with it.” – Dean Acheson

LIFE IS LIKE A RIVER QUOTES

“Life is like the river, sometimes it sweeps you gently along and sometimes the rapids come out of nowhere.” ― Emma Smith

“There are no guarantees in life, no certainties in life – just the ever-changing, flowing river of life.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Life is much like a river. I can’t determine where the river comes from or where it’s flowing to. But I can immerse myself in it as it’s flowing by me.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Life is a river of ordeals that makes men swim upstream so that they may chase after their dreams, and whoever refuses to swim gets washed away downstream and be dragooned to drown to its defeatist depths.” ― Picazo Basha

“The body is like water, and the blood as the river.” ― Mia Siufi

“Life is a river” ― Manjushree Mohanty

“The river is one of my favorite metaphors, the symbol of the great flow of Life Itself. The river begins at Source, and returns to Source, unerringly. This happens every single time, without exception. We are no different.” – Jeffrey R. Anderson

“We are all in the same boat, boat of life. Does not seem to be a rudder with oarsman. Perhaps my words may find a path, path through currents and water as we continue our journey on the river of life.” – River of Life”

“The only way to understand a river is to jump into it.” ― Alice Hoffman

“Learn from a river; obstacles may force it to change its course, but never its destination.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

“You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.” -Paulo Coelho

FLOWING RIVER QUOTES

Flowing river is used to compare with our lives, and everything in it – all of them continuously changing and evolving all the time. These are some amazing quotes about rivers that capture the ever-changing times.

“On and on they flew, over the countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads and rivers winding through the landscapes like strips of matte and glossy ribbon.” ― J.K. Rowling

“When you stop beside a river, you get this message: Flow! And when you flow, you meet the never-seen and the never-lived parts of the life!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.” – Mikhail Lermontov

“We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations.” ― David Brower

“The way to the place you wish to go can always be found; just behave like a river, that is to say, firstly, move and secondly, move with no hesitation!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Be like a river. Be open. Flow.” – Julie Connor

“The river will always be the river, but never the river you know.” — Unknown

“A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.” – Maya Angelou

This is one of my quotes about rivers that captures so many things at once.

“A river continues to flow despite losing a few drops at each turn.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore.” ― Félix J. Palma

“Patience is the river that finds its way to the sea, by flowing through many confluences.” ― Mladen Đorđević

“Why do you live on the bank of a river?’ was one of these questions.

‘Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind.” ― James Stephens

“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.” ― Dejan Stojanovic

“A winter message from the river: Never surrender! Life can try to stop you, but somehow find a way to flow!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Not a hundred feet away the river roared over a cliff’s-edge, and weren’t really leaves, even if I’d been careful to forget that.” ― Naomi Novik

“Do not despise the water droplets that you receive. Soon, they will be a river.” ― Bruce Mbanzabugabo

“Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.” – Henry David Thoreau

“You want to be a river? This is not necessary because you can be a river without being a river; just flow in your life, this is what the rivers are doing, they are flowing! Remember, you can be anything without giving up yourself. Never wish to be something else, always be yourself! You want to be a Sun? Just give warmth to everyone with kind words!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it’s going to go and where you’ll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don’t let anyone deter you from that.” – Eartha Kitt

BEAUTIFUL RIVER CAPTIONS

These are some of the beautiful descriptions of rivers by well-known authors, writers, and poets, which you can find here in this list of quotes about rivers.

“I had been afraid of the awful presence of the river, which was the soul of the river, but through her, I learned that my spirit shared in the spirit of all things.” ― Rudolfo Anaya

“Words are like a pebble, and the heart is like a river. What happens when a pebble is thrown into a river? It causes a ripple.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The moving, living river carries the soul of this earth. The murmurs of its music, how the whispers arise from the riverbed, only to lull you in the deeps.” ― Jayita Bhattacharjee

“A beloved river is better than a despised ocean.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

“The river of knowledge has no depth.” ― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“During the infinite distance between your center and my perimeter;

I feel, a continuous river of faith flowing for ages.” ― Geeta Tripathee

“Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go.” – Blaise Pascal

Rivers are compared to women often, and these quotes about river perfectly capture the emotions poetically.

“The river embraces me and guides me to swim inside her and to drink the nectar of love from her bosom. She tells me her secrets and I tell her mine.” ― Avijeet Das

“Like a house that has a home and a river that flows, so does love become when you open your heart, even when the lights go out or the flow encounters rocks.” ― Goitsemang Mvula

“A small river full of fish is better than a large sea full of none.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Love is the river of life in the world.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Every man has a river on his mind: The River of Thoughts! But not every man has a holy river on his mind: The River of Right Thoughts!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.” ― Neil Gaiman

“Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion.” – Jakob Bohme

“I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea.” – Paulo Coelho

“I was still water, held by my surroundings. I am now a river, carving my own path.” ― Scott Stabile

“First mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. Finally, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.” ― Dan Millman

More beautiful quotes about rivers that will inspire you to plan a trip to mountains and valleys home to this beauty. These quotes on rivers are perfect captions to inspire others too.

“The language of a river inscribes over eyes of moths and flies the navel of the land is a lake.” ― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“When the river meets the sea, he dies! Because the character of the river is to flow and when the character dies, everything dies!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“She is drawn to the river, and all its hideous, dead-eyed treasures: rot-bloated cats, and cold-meat corpses of unwanted infants, eels plucking at their tender fingers and toes.” ― Emmanuelle de Maupassant

These quotes about river are words of directions for us to think like rivers when we feel lost.

“He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.” – Blaise Pascal

“I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.” – Edward Abbey

“Rivers flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.“ – John Muir

MORE CAPTIONS ABOUT RIVERS

Check out these amazing quotes about rivers perfect for you if you want deeper, meaningful captions to go with your photos.

“There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.” ― Jules Verne

“A dream is like a river ever-changing as it flows and a dreamer’s just a vessel that must follow where it goes.” – Garth Brooks

“The rush of the river was a voice, a presence. Water flowed in different to the heave and plunge of the sun, the shrouded moon, and the slow spin of the stars. The sound reached them in a song without words, and all effort to grasp its meaning was hopeless, for, like the water itself, one could not grasp hold of sound. The flow was ceaseless and immeasurable and just as stillness did not in fact exist, so neither did true absolute silence.” ― Steven Erikson

“River is time in water; as it came, still so it flows, yet never is the same.” – Barten Holyday

“With heavy rainfall, the river will overflow its banks. This is the spirit of gratitude; the more grateful you are, the more your life overflow with abundance.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The care of rivers is not a question of rivers but of the human heart.” – Shozo Tanaka

More wise quotes about rivers that compare life with rivers and flowing water.

“If you have to cross a river, you shall cross the river! Through swimming, through a raft, through walking, through any way possible, you shall cross it!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Beyond the mountain, the river soaked in moonlight carried songs from boatmen” ― Meeta Ahluwalia

“I wanted to change my fate, to force it down another road. I wanted to stand in the river of time and make it flow a different direction, if just for a little while.” ― April Genevieve Tucholke

“Water is sagacious because it carries inside of itself the bottomless profundity of oceans, the cosmic looks of the clouds, subtle wits of the rivers, the inquisitive character of the rains, and the silent meditation of the little lakes!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again.” ― Elif Shafak

“He used to often say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

Life is indeed like a river, although the analogy seems very obvious – this comparison is very in-depth, and has many layers that we may not understand at first. These beautiful quotes about rivers and life are perfect descriptions if you want river of life quotes.

“If the earth is a mother then rivers are her veins.” ― Amit Kalantri

“The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell.” ― Henry David Thoreau

“The river moves, but it follows a path. When it tires of one journey, it rubs through some rock to forge a new way. Hard work, but that’s its nature.” – Kekla Magoon

“To say something great, you must first stop trying to say something great! Sometimes struggling is an obstacle to reach the target! Flow like a river, calmly, naturally, enjoying the present moment, without thinking of the ocean and finally, you will be there!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“There are no mighty mountains for the universe because there are no mountains for the universe, no rivers, no sun, and no clouds! There is the only universe for the universe, just a single entity!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

RIVER QUOTES FOR INSTAGRAM

Below is the list of river quotes that you can use along with Instagram hashtags to quote and caption your pictures. Use these quotes about river if you want some short and sweet sayings.

“The river is everywhere.” ― Herman Hesse

“A good river is nature’s life work in song.” ― Mark Helprin

“A river unneeded still finds its way down to the ocean.” ― Will Advise

“We steer the boat, we don’t alter the river.” ― J. Earp

“Time Flows Away Like the Water in the River.” – Confucius

“The night. The stars. The river.” ― Edward Abbey

“A river starts by longing for the ocean.” ― Will Advise

If you want some amazing river captions for Instagram that are crisp, and yet beautiful, check out these quotes about rivers.

“A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A river is easier to channel than to stop.” ― Brandon Sanderson

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi

“A river flows freely from its source.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita

“A river doesn’t just carry water, it carries life.” ― Amit Kalantri

Use these quotes about rivers for thoughtful captions and beautiful messages to be conveyed.

“We can’t always be the bridge. Sometimes we have to be the flooding river.” ― K. Weikel

“I had no plans of any destination. I wish to flow like a river.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita

“A river has many curves, but it always reaches the ocean.” ― Donald L. Hicks

“Every time we see a river flowing forward with courage, deep in our hearts we know that we must do the same!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” – Jim Watkins

“The river has great wisdom and whispers its secrets to the hearts of men.” – Mark Twain

LONG QUOTES ABOUT RIVER

If you are a fan of poetic words, long, meaningful captions that enunciate all the emotions beautifully, check these quotes about rivers below.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” ― Norman Maclean

“I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It’s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it rubs and scours, gnaws and kneads, eats, and bores its way through the land. Even the greatest rivers- the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtze and the Mississippi, the Amazon and the great grey-green greasy Limpopo all set about with fever trees-must have been no more than trickles and flickering streams before they grew into mighty rivers.

One of my favorite quotes about river is this one, as it is self-introspecting and makes one wonder about so many things.

Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to a wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for their own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and plowing a valley of my own?” ― Aidan Chambers

“I have an immoderate passion for water; for the sea, though so vast, so restless, so beyond one’s comprehension; for rivers, beautiful, yet fugitive and elusive; but especially for marshes, teeming with all that mysterious life of the creatures that haunt them. A marsh is a whole world within a world, a different world, with a life of its own, with its own permanent denizens, its passing visitors, its voices, its sounds, its own strange mystery.” ― Guy de Maupassant

“Rivers run through our history and folklore and link us as a people. They nourish and refresh us and provide a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort. We are a nation rich in rivers.” – Charles Kuralt

“From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the “River of Silence”; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

I love rivers, no matter where, and these beautiful quotes about rivers are so deep, covering humanity, our journey in our lives, the challenges, the changes, and everything else – These river quotes are perfect if you want some wise words of wisdom.

“The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.” ― Myrtle Reed

“The river is the center of the land, the place where the waters, and much more, come together. Here is the home of wildlife, the route of explorers, and recreation paradise. Only fragments of our inheritance remain unexploited, but these streams are more valuable than ever.” – Tim Palmer

“The river was beautiful and wise. There were the two of them being happy in a new way. For here, there was no man, no woman, no master, no yellow, no black, no white. We, we who were, we are the same no longer.”- David Paul Kirkpatrick

“Rivers must have been the guides that conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Man is like a desert without the rain of a woman. Nothing can be born and grown without her nourishment. She is a life-giving river that gives and loves without holding anything back. And without her water, man would walk around aimlessly, feeling incomplete and hollow like an empty well. The longer he roams, the deeper the hole within his soul expands,growing bigger and bigger like a barren tree whose branches resemble the cracks on hard, dry soil. And he shall continue to feel incomplete and malnourished, until – he encounters a godly woman, to show him life and quench his thirst.” ― Suzy Kassem

“A river is a water in its loveliest form, rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart.” – Roderick Haig Brown

“Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark– which was a candle in a cabin window… It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they were made or only just happened; Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have taken too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could ‘a’ laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable… because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn’t hear nothing for you couldn’t tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.” ― Mark Twain

“The road by the river had been one of my favorites. I could walk at the same speed as the river. I could feel it breathing. It was alive. More than anything, it was the river we had to thank for creating the town. For grinding down from the hills over how many hundreds of thousands of years, for hauling the dirt, filling the sea, and making the tree grow. The town belonged to the river from the very beginning, and it would always be the way” ― Haruki Murakami

“How divine the coming of the morning,—the coming of the Sun,—exorcising the shadowy terrors of the night with the infinite restoration of color! I look upon the woods, and they are not the same: the palms have vanished; the cypresses have fled away; trees young and comely and brightly green replace them. A hand is laid upon my shoulder,—the hand of the gray Captain: ‘Go forward, and see what you have never seen before.’ Even as he speaks, our boat, turning sharply, steams out of the green water into—what can I call it?—a flood of fluid crystal, —a river of the molten diamond,—a current of liquid light?” ― Lafcadio Hearn

“By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up so that it was almost a river, and being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” – A. A. Milne

That’s it about the best quotes about rivers and streams. Hope you have found the beautiful river quote to share with your photo caption. If you have more beautiful river captions and flowing water quotes, do comment below.

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