What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
Chief SeattleRead
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
Interpretation
We must instill in our children a deep respect for the earth and our ancestors' legacy.
Chief Seattle emphasizes the importance of respecting the Earth and recognizing our connection to it through our ancestors. He urges that we teach future generations about the richness of the land and the consequences of our actions upon it, as our well-being is intertwined with that of the planet.
In practice
In an environmental education seminar to stress the importance of conservation.
What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds.
All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.
Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.
Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.
Destroying a tropical rainforest for profit is like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner.
Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them.
I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.
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