"Cool Quotes"

"Nature, red in tooth and claw."

@Tennyson: In Memoriam LVI

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments- there are consequences."

*Robert G. Ingress: Lectures & Essays, 'Some Reasons Why'

"All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God."

*Thomas Browne: Religio Medici, Pt. I

*Robert Burns: Ye Banks and Braes

"Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee."

*Martin H. Fischer: Fischerisms

The Tao of Sailing

Upon the Sea Of The Great Mother

Our thoughts float in ships of words upon the sea of the Great Mother. They play upon her surface, heedless of the dark silence beneath.

From deep in the dark silence, and emptiness summons us out of words and thoughts. Listen to this inner silence. It is the sound of emptiness.

The deep emptiness is the womb of the Great Mother, the dark beginning of the beginning. Just beneath our every word and thought...it waits. Listen to its silence. Answer with silence. And then sink with emptiness into emptiness and be received. (83)

Stones Know What To Do

Stones know what to do. Water knows what to do. Even birds and fishes are not confused. But thoughts thinking about thoughts always get confused. So return to the thoughtless beginning. (25)

When A Wave Comes

When a wave comes, do not say, "This alone is wave." The wave comes from wind, from the shoal of bottom, the flow of tides, the expanse of sea... The wave comes from all things. All things come from all other things. So it is that each thing is everything.. all at once. (73)

The Wisdom Of Sand

Broken stones do not mend. But beachsand slowly fills behind a parting foot and parted waves form again after a ship's passing. The wisdom of sand is the hardness in stone that understands the way of water.

Be form moving toward the formless. Yield and overcome. Break and be whole.

The unchanging in everyone is a hardness that understands the wisdom of changing. This is why breaking becomes finding, and why losing has nothing to lose. (3)

Not Once A Mistake

The pattern of sand on open beaches, the order of water in churning tides, the rhythm of waves and the push of wind... at a glance, it seems as if the whole earth is thinking. Even its curve of horizons and shape of seas, its breathing seasons and quiet stones... and not once a mistake. (7)


Sea Belongs With Land

The belonging of each thing is assured by every other thing. Sea belongs with land, waves belong with wind, fish belong with water. In all the Great Mother, there is nothing not useful, not used.

The sameness and difference of each thing makes everything belong just-so.

Even not-belonging belongs. If not-belonging did not belong, the Great Mother would stop breathing. (77)

"Nature is not governed except by obeying her."

@Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning

Touch The Earth

Everything as it moves, now and then, here and there, makes stops. The bird as it flies stops in one place to make its nest, and in another to rest in its flight. A man when he goes forth stops when he wills. So the god has dropped. The sun, which is so bright and beautiful, is one place where he has stopped. The moon, the stars, the winds he has been with. The trees, the animals, are all where he has stopped, and the Indian thinks of these places and sends his prayers there to reach the place where the god has stopped and win help and a blessing. (37)

Dakota wiseman

A song by Uvavnuk, an Eskimo woman shaman

Holy Mother Earth, the trees and all nature, are witnesses of your thoughts and deeds. (5)

Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not even perish by the flames of fire. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals. We cannot sell the lives of men and animals; therefore we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us. You can count your money and burn it with in the nod of a buffalo's head, but only the Great Spirit can count the grains of sand and the blades of grass of these plains. As a present to you, we will give you anything we have that you can take with you; but the land, never. (53)

Chief of one of the principal bands of the northern Blackfeet.

"Nature has always had more power than education."

*Volatair (Francois Marie Arouet; 1694-1778)

"Nature is usually wrong."

*James Whistler: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

@Wordsworth: Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle

Bibliography