A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen thousand foot mountain... avoid prettiness - the word looks much like pettiness - and there is but little difference between them.
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No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
There were signs. Probably more of them than I ever caught, even after the fact. But I missed them all. Maybe because I wasn’t looking for them. I was too busy checking over my shoulder at the fire I’d just come through to pay much attention to the thousand-foot cliff looming in front of me.
You haven’t changed at all. I expected a perceptible difference, but here you are, red-faced just like always.
Mothers know the difference between a broth and a consommé. And the difference between damask and chintz. And the difference between vinyl and Naugahyde. And the difference between a house and a home. And the difference between a romantic and a stalker. And the difference between a rock and a hard place.
Stop thinking, and end your problems. What difference between yes and no? What difference between success and failure? Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid? How ridiculous!
When consciousness has awakened it is not something sensational or spectacular. It's simply a reality as natural as the one of a tree that has growth slowly and developed without starts or sensational stuffs. Nature is Nature.
Suppose you were working at your job one day, and you made a little mistake. Then all of a sudden a red light went on over your desk, and fifteen thousand people stood up and yelled at you that you sucked?
The point is that when I see a sunset or a waterfall or something, for a split second it's so great, because for a little bit I'm out of my brain, and it's got nothing to do with me.
The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.
A cheery relaxation is man's natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like.
I used to hate the urban environment and the urban din. But I realize now that it's really not that much different than living next to a waterfall for wildlife. Most wildlife - unless they're specifically adapted - avoid being around a waterfall or whitewater streams and rivers because it jams their sense of surveillance. They are more vulnerable, and their message loses intelligibility. Now, the ouzel is able to overcome that in various ways. Back to the urban environment, we're talking and delivering messages as if we weren't next to a waterfall, and that's a problem.
If you build - if you spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall over, let's say, a mountain, if you build a 10-foot wall over a 10,000-foot mountain, and someone is determined to climb the 10,000-foot mountain, they're not going to be deterred by the 10-foot wall. It's a matter of common sense.
Red and raw like my heart, pried from your's, the two beating, no longer together, but a thousand miles between them when only yesterday they thumped in unison.
Roll rocks down a ten-thousand-foot mountain, and they cannot be stopped - this is because of the mountain, not the rocks. Get people to fight with the courage to win every time, and the strong and the weak unite - this is because of the momentum, not the individuals.
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