One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb.
... if you repeat a thought, or say a word, over and over again-not once, not twice, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of times-do you have any idea of the creative power of that? A thought or a word expressed and expressed and expressed becomes just that-expressed. That is, pushed out. It becomes outwardly realized. It becomes your physical reality.
A leaf cannot return to the bud - bluestar to fireheart and greystripe
The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.
'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'
The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression.
What happens if you are the last (the very, very last) of your species, and you die - and humans notice? We live, increasingly, at a time when extinctions are recorded, remembered, and the last animal (or plant) in its line, by virtue of its being last, becomes a kind of celebrity. Its finality becomes a thing to honor.
When a bud breaks it becomes a flower, when a heart breaks it becomes divine.
I thought: 'It would be great to create a series of clothes that looked like that tree.' Clothes that gave you the green of the leaf and the warm brown of the underside of that leaf and the vanilla colored blossom.
The Goddess is not separate from the world – She IS the world, and all things in it: moon, sun, earth, star, stone, seed, flowing river, wind, wave, leaf and branch, bud and blossom, fang and claw, woman and man.
Feeling good" is your way of telling yourself that your last thought was truth, that your last word was wisdom, that your last action was love. To measure how highly you have evolved, simply look to see what makes you "feel good.
One leaf left on a branch and not a sound of sadness or despair. One leaf left on a branch and no unhappiness. One leaf left all by itself in the air and it does not speak of loneliness or death. One leaf and it spends itself in swaying mildly in the breeze.
Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger.
Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.
If a leaf fell from a tree, I'd stop juggling and play with the leaf. I went to my prop bag and got a little bandage and stuck the leaf back on the tree. People loved it.