Adages & Proverbs

“We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. This we know. The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.”–Chief Seattle

“[size=150]A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.”
Zitkala-Sa[/size]

[size=150]“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator[/size]

:sad-teareye:

[size=85]I love N.A. spirituality
It is so real and beautiful[/size]

“O Great Spirit, help me never judge another until I have walked two weeks in their moccasins.” Edwin Laughing Fox

[size=150]Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
-Galatians 4:16[/size]

[size=150]“I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon the dewdrop[/size]

[size=150]“Does the song of the sea end at the shore or in the hearts of those who listen to it?” [/size]

[size=150]Keep me from the wisdom that does not weep, and the philosophy that does not laugh, and the pride that does not bow its head before a child[/size]

Compliments of Kahlil Gibran

For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know. - Theodore Roosevelt.

[size=150]Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.[/size]
John Stuart Mill

[size=85]Pandora - An almost identical quote to Roosevelt’s ^ which TR must have borrowed since JSM lived and died before
Roosevelt’s time.

It would seem to me that that flavor must be felt/tasted even before the true fighter has begun.[/size]

[size=150]Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts. [/size]
Plotinus 204 or 205 C.E., Egyptian Philosopher

[size=85]Somehow that strikes me as such a
wonderful place to be. [/size]

[size=150]Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance. [/size]
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

[size=200]The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.[/size]
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tsu
As Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English

[size=150]To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it - this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed. [/size]
~Walter Scott

[size=85]Food for thought.[/size]

I know this has been around but its still one of my favorites…

Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee?

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one would pop up.

Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire, and soon the pots came to boil. In the first pot she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, “Tell me what you see.”

“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied. Her grandmother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The grandmother then asked the granddaughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the grandmother asked the granddaughter to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma then asked,

“What does it mean, grandmother?”

Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her granddaughter.

[size=150]I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores. [/size]
Victor Hugo

Anzha,… I enjoyed reading your little story…it was beautifully poignant. Stories like that give much food for thought. And, ah, how coffee does change us. :slight_smile: You ought to C&P it over and create a new thread for anecdotal stories(?) or such, but stories woven by the spirit of Solomon as that one was.

[size=150]"Live abundantly, but thoughtlessly with a huge capacity to forget – seeking to avoid over analysis and not to learn so much from mistakes as to never make another leap’![/size]
krossie phader - on How to live unphilosophically!
:slight_smile: :banana-dance:

[size=150]Confucius said, “He who learns but does not think is lost; he who thinks but does not learn is in danger.”[/size]

“The Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” Gilbert K. Chesterton

This is why ‘practiced balance’ is learned balance. It becomes second nature to us.

[size=150]"Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.”[/size]
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“[size=150]What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” [/size]— Richard Bach (Illusions)
Ah

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay

[size=150]Be patient with all that is resolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves; do not Now seek the answers; which cannot be given, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything Now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.
Rainer Maria Rilke[/size]

[size=150]A tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others a green thing which stands in the way. As a man IS, so he SEES.[/size]
William Blake