"Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and
sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin,
sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometimes
health-giving, sometimes poisonous. It suffers change into as many
natures as are the different places through which it passes. And as the
mirror changes with the colour of its subject, so it alters with the
nature of the place, becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous,
salty, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green,
black, blue, greasy, fat or slim. Sometimes it starts a conflagration,
sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, carries away or
sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or
empties, raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the
cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, nourishes at
times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, at times is
without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods. In
time and with water, everything changes."
- Leonardo da Vinci