All Creatures Quotes

Despite some remaining puzzles, there's no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives ~ Michael Behe

God wants to be praised for nourishing and cherishing, for God cherishes all creatures. God is not only the creator, but is also the sustainer and nourisher. ~ Martin Luther

The highest religion is to rise to universal brother hood; aye to consider all creatures your equals. ~ Guru Nanak

Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily course of duty run. Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice. All praise to thee, who safe hast kept and hast refreshed me while I slept! Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, I may of endless life partake. All praise to thee, my God, this night for all the blessings of the light. Keep me, oh keep me, King of Kings, beneath Thine own almighty wings. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. ~ Thomas Ken

Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else's line of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes, and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us. ~ Jack London

Irrationality is the exclusive preserve of humans as among all creatures only we have the power to rationalise, that being the art of packaging patently irrational as apparently rational. ~ R.N. Prasher

I hope it's the good kind of dilemma," Reginald broke Patricia's reverie. "Whatever one you're on the horns of."
...
"I was just thinking," she said. "There are so many scary problems in the world. Like, I was just reading that we could be seeing the last of the bees in North America soon. And if that happened, food webs would just collapse, and tons more people would starve. But suppose you had the power to change things? You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you'd create another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature's way of striking a balance. We humans don't have any natural predators left, so nature has to find another way to handle us."
...
"I am, as you know, a fan of nature," said Reginald. "And yet, nature doesn't 'find ways' to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It's more that nature's playing field is full of traps. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, companions in awakening from fear. ~ Pema Chodron

For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Does Heaven ever speak? The four seasons come and go, and all creatures thrive and grow. Does Heaven ever speak! ~ Confucius

Every soul on earth is equally precious, even those of plants and animals. If you see love in one area and not another, then you are not reflecting true love for all creatures on earth, only a deficiency in your senses. The light of love sees no walls. ~ Suzy Kassem

Philosophy was right to vaunt liberty; it is the foremost desire of all creatures. But philosophy forgot that in civilized societies liberty is illusory if the common people lack wealth. When the wage-earning classes are poor, their independence is as fragile as a house without foundations. The free man who lacks wealth immediately sinks back under the yoke of the rich. The newly freed slave takes fright at the need of providing for his own subsistence and hastens to sell himself back into slavery in order to escape this new anxiety that hangs over him like Damocles' sword. In thoughtlessly giving him liberty without wealth, you merely replace his physical torment with a mental torment. He finds life burdensome in his new state... Thus when you give liberty to the people, it must be bolstered by two supports which are the guarantee of comfort and industrial attraction... ~ Charles Fourier

Kindness is about energy we give and take from all creatures. The bottom line is the integrative interaction and the total interconnectedness between human beings, all creatures, and God. Kindness is a spirituality of solid truth, not shifting emotion; of justice, not occasional philanthropy; of genuine love, not sentimentality or masochism; of evolved adults, not fixated infants. ~ Jean Maalouf

Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.
Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures. ~ Edward Abbey

When a sincere woman begins to dance, the seven heavens, the earth, and all creatures begin to dance. ~ Shams Tabrizi

Instead of the birds of the sky and beast of the field, the gods were more than men because Man needed them to be, for what could the world be if Man were the best of all creatures? ~ Thomm Quackenbush

We should not content ourselves with a God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures. That kind of God will not leave us, unless we ourselves choose to turn away from him. ~ Meister Eckhart

Fish cannot drown in water. Birds cannot sink in air. This has God given to all creatures, to foster and seek their own nature. How then can I withstand mine? ~ Mechthild Of Magdeburg

When hurtled into a crisis situation, all creatures great and small will fight for survival. But they live in a fight to be free. A vegetative life of status quo is not going to be enough. So what then to do with this freedom? Really the only thing one can do is go to the light, as our moth friends will do. The freedom to seek possibilities. Following the chain to its source, this is the basic reason that life itself will kill you, because life leads to freedom and freedom leads back to the incinerating light from where your life first came. ~ Tommy Walker

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Those of us who are in tune with nature and animals know it is our way of life, Bram. There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try and eat legumes, nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals ... Nature hears one voice and obeys it. That is why ten or ten thousand birds may rise from the surface of a lake at the same time and yet never touch one another. Man only hears his own voice. He constantly bumps into another. Even his voice mirrors his erratic walk, jealousy, hate, ego, pride, lying, cheating. He makes his own judgements and falls prey to his greed. Remember, the moon is reflected on one drop of water as is the entire ocean
so it is with God. He is reflected ins each living thing
in a grain of sand as the entire shore, one star as the whole universe. Each animal as in all creatures. -Jagrat ~ Ralph Helfer

There is nothing very remarkable about
being immortal; with the exception of mankind,
all creatures are immortal, for they know
nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Do devils love each other? Do they walk arm in arm in hell saying, "Ah, you are my friend, how I love you," things like that to each other? ... it was a matter of a concept of evil, wasn't it? All creatures in hell are supposed to hate one another, as all the saved hate the damned, without reservation. ~ Anne Rice

Suzanne, your rabbit's fine. Marcus will probably feed him later," Emily countered, and gave the leash a sharp tug. "It baffles me how a werewolf can keep a rabbit, of all creatures, as a pet, but you've always made it quite clear how important he is to you and we'd never dare neglect him and risk your wrath. We're already late and we can't afford to lose anymore time, besides, you did check on him before you went to bed. ~ Catherine Gardiner

God is in all creatures, even in the smallest flowers. ~ Martin Luther

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate. ~ Alexander Pope

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. ~ Albert Schweitzer

I love nature dearly and all creatures that contribute to make it what it is. I see the beauty in all expressions of life, and I see how blind so many of us still are. Our planet is remarkably abundant and there's more than enough for us all.It is greed and shortsightedness that create the illusion of scarcity. ~ Yossi Ghinsberg

Spiritual power is the eternal guide, in this life and the life after, for man ranks supreme among all creatures. Led forward by spiritual power, man can reach the summit destined for him by the Great Creator. ~ Haile Selassie

God quickened in the Sea and in the Rivers, So many fishes of so many features, That in the waters we may see all Creatures; Even all that on the earth is to be found,! As if the world were in deep waters drowned. ~ Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas

If you are not filled with overflowing love, compassion and goodwill for all creatures living wild in nature, You will never know true happiness. ~ Paul Oxton

If you want to nourish a bird, you should let it live any way it chooses. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the sages never require the same ability from all creatures ... concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. The true saint leaves wisdom to the ants, takes a cue from the fishes, and leaves willfulness to the sheep. ~ Zhuangzi

All were happy
plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people
adult men and women
never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy
a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man? ~ Henry David Thoreau

I have a kitten,the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin. ~ William Cowper

My Ten Commandments:
1. God is a verb, not a noun.
2. Prayers are important only if they lead to corresponding actions.
3. Creation is an art. Science provides the tools for the artist. Anybody with the tools is not necessarily an artist.
4. Religion involves exclusivity and superiority. Divinity is inclusive and involves humility.
5. God by definition should be omnipotent. He should not require intermediation by priests and prophets.
6. All prophets have displayed exclusivity and superiority. (Refer to #4 above)
7. Rituals involve intermediation and often cruelty towards other fellows of creation.
8. Inclusivity and humility towards all creations of God is divine.
9. Rituals are antithesis of the divine. Rituals indicate a god and his intermediaries who are greedy, arrogant, revengeful and cruel.
10. God exists only for increasing happiness of all creatures. ~ R.N. Prasher

Of all creatures on earth, in proportion to their size and weight, humans have the smallest footprint on the ground and the largest on the environment. ~ R.N. Prasher

IN THIS MODERN CENTURY ON MOTHER EARTH TIME HAS BEEN ALREADY RIPPED TO CONTEMPLATE ON MYTHOLOGICAL STYLE.TO DEODORIZE ,EXORCISE NANO MICRO LEVEL OF SANCTITY SHRIVE HOMEWORK OF ENTIRE GLOBAL HUMAN SAGACIOUS PENSIVE MENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND HEED STUNT. SO.LIKE OUR VENERABLE ANCIENT ENSHRINE SOULS ALREADY HAD ASCETICISM TO HOBNOB INTO DIVINISM.ALL GLOBAL CITIZENS HAVE TO DO EXECUTE DIFFERENT TYPE OF HOLY SANCROSANCT RELIGIOUS YAGNAS RIGHT NOW.TO CONSECRATED TO HIS EXCELLENCY UNIVERSAL BOSS GOD FOR THE PROSPERITY OF ALL CREATURES OF MEGA AND MACROCOSMOS TILL ELEVENTH HOUR OF ITS EXISTENCE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL. ~ Various

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the second night all creatures woke, and the sleepless cricket was silent suddenly. The thunder spoke from ridge to ridge, from canyon to canyon, far, then nearer. Darkness split wide open to reveal what it hides. Only for a moment can the eyes of the creatures see the world in that awful light. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

[..] it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of inflicting suffering and death. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

All creatures are flawed, but out of the flaw may come the universe. ~ Marguerite Young

We are all animals of this planet. We are all creatures. And nonhuman animals experience pain sensations just like we do. They too are strong, intelligent, industrious, mobile, and evolutional. They too are capable of growth and adaptation. Like us, firsthand foremost, they are earthlings. And like us, they are surviving. Like us they also seek their own comfort rather than discomfort. And like us they express degrees of emotion. In short like us, they are alive. ~ Joaquin Phoenix

Fish would probably be the last of all creatures to discover water. ~ Flavil R. Yeakley Jr.

As in heaven Your will is punctually performed, so may it be done on earth by all creatures, particularly in me and by me. ~ Elizabeth Of Hungary

After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being perhaps just the chooser of the laws. By the time God's role has been so diminished, he becomes a bit like a constitutional monarch, presiding ceremonially but not having any more work to do. That's a place for God if it makes people comfortable to keep God as the presider over the universe. I suppose that is satisfying for many. ~ Daniel Dennett

In India it is believed that all creatures have a purpose. ~ Mel Gibson

Humanity smacks me the taste of human psyche and prejudice, being part of human nature. Humans believe that they have a right to decide on behalf of all creatures and make laws for them. Love is more preferred word to replace humanity, it incorporates feelings of all creatures in comparison to humanity, which is only humane. ~ Tarif Naaz

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? ~ Ayn Rand

What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of the one life deep within yourself and all creatures; to be it! Therefore, all love is the love of God. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma ... ~ Gary Snyder

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant. ~ Michel De Montaigne

With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it, and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack? Surely we are the most favored of all creatures. ~ A.W. Tozer

Perhaps the greatest thing one can discover is that you can decide who you are. You don't have to be whom the Ludlucks made you. You don't even have to be who you were before that. You can choose. We are all creatures of our own devising. ~ Robin Hobb

Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability. ~ Maxwell Maltz

White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott's suggestion of a trained nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves undertook the task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten thousand denied him by the surgeon. The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgement. All his life he had tended and operated on the soft humans of civilization, who live sheltered lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any strength in their grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor in the generations before them. A constitution of iron and vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures. ~ Jack London

Safety is the preeminent concern of all creatures and it clearly justifies a seemingly abrupt and rejecting response from time to time. ~ Gavin De Becker

And the turtles, of course ... all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be. ~ Dr. Seuss

Dharma (cosmic law) aims at the happiness of all creatures. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

In this light, my spirit saw through all things and into all creatures and I recognized God in grass and plants. ~ Jakob Bohme

No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark. ~ Daniel Defoe

For our soul is so preciously loved of him that is highest, that it over-passeth the knowing of all creatures. ~ Julian Of Norwich

Even a stone has its uses, and man who is the most intelligent of all creatures must be of some use, hasn't he? ~ Nikolai Gogol

I discovered another analogy in the legacy of Prophet Muhammad that immediately clicked with me: that the angels put down their wings in humility for a person who seeks knowledge, and that all living things, even the ants in their anthill and the fish in the sea, pray for a person who teaches people good things.
When I read this, I literally felt the goodness flow out of my heart for all creatures. The beautiful mental image it evoked resonated with my concept of the universe as one unit, and of all living things seeking to live together in peace and harmony, and being grateful when humans tried to fit into the circle of life, instead of working so hard to disrupt its equilibrium ~ Sahar El-Nadi

All creatures, day and night, make manifestation of Allah. Some of them know what they are doing and are aware of their manifesting, while others are unaware. However it may be, Allah's manifestation is confirmed. ~ Rumi

Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small - too small, that is, to contain the scientist or the farmer or the farm family or the local ecosystem or the local community - and this is crucial. ~ Wendell Berry

Sigh like the wind--open your arms, your chest, your heart--and all creatures will hum to you. ~ Penelope Smith

Yea, I thought it impossible that ever I should attain to so much goodness of heart, as to thank God that He had made me a man. Man indeed is the most noble by creation, of all creatures in the visible world; but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble. The beasts, birds, fishes, etc. I blessed their condition; for they had not a sinful nature; they were not obnoxious to the wrath of God; they were not to go to hell-fire after death; I could therefore have rejoiced, had my condition been as any of theirs. ~ John Bunyan

HAMLET [ ... ] we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that's the end.
CLAUDIUS Alas, alas.
HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
CLAUDIUS What dost thou mean by this?
HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. ~ William Shakespeare

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express - not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life - but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves - always with respect - the mildest possible grimace of irony. ~ Doris Lessing

The voices of all creatures are in the voices of the river. ~ Hermann Hesse

Do you know, that of all the things we know, all the things scientists have managed to divulge of the universe's secrets, attraction is the one that dumbfounds us still. Think of it: gravity, magnetism, what do we really know of what makes one mass attracted to another? Why did that leaf seek out the ground? …. And, of course, there is the attraction between a man and a woman – or a man and a man, a woman and a woman – but not just us humans, all creatures. How do we know? How are we drawn to one another? ~ F.D. Shands

O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron's beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true men - to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve Thee as Thou hast blessed us - with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Amen. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

your librarians go into battle?" "When they must," said Lirael. "The Library is very old, and deep, and contains many things that have been put away for good reason. Creatures, dangerous knowledge, artifacts made not wisely, but too well . . . books that should not be opened without proper preparation, some books that should never be opened at all." "Creatures? ~ Garth Nix

Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Just in case you haven't heard it in a while, I Love You. My deep felt love for all creatures living includes precious beings like you! ~ Ace Antonio Hall

He who nurtures benevolence for all creatures within his heart overcomes all difficulties and will be the recipient of all types of riches at every step. ~ Chanakya

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what - how - when - where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. ~ Henry David Thoreau

O, You who are ever giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, You are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. ~ Hildegard Of Bingen

I suspect everyone there can reason along the lines I described ... It's just that when it comes to evolution, and especially to the related realization that we are all pretty small bits of the universe, it seems as though Ham and his followers just can't handle the truth. They throw aside their common sense and cling to the hope that there's something that makes it okay to *not* think for themselves.""The irony is, in the process they are walking away from our ability to understand who we are, where we came from, and how we fit into a cosmos ... If there is something divine in our nature, something that sets humans apart from all creatures, surely our ability to reason is a key part of it. The irony is, in the process they are walking away from our ability to understand who we are, where we came from, and how we fit into a cosmos ... If there is something divine in our nature, something that sets humans apart from all creatures, surely our ability to reason is a key part of it. ~ Bill Nye

I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires. ~ Alice Hoffman

Fear is the bane of all creatures and bubbles inside all forming a rock of solidifying darkness, sucking all will power to act or to think or to say away. Fear is the bane of all creatures, it is our black hole we cannot live without. ~ Isabella Irini Poretsis

Do not sag with exhaustion. There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture. But by making your way through this book - by merely picking it up, perhaps - you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look! ~ Alexandra Horowitz

Weapons are ominous tools. They are abhorred by all creatures. Anyone who follows the Way shuns them. ~ Laozi

We clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other's arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments. ~ Wendell Berry

The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation ... Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world ... The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, the universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev

Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on them arrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning. ~ Tom Robbins

God is equally near in all creatures. ~ Meister Eckhart

It is said that once upon a time St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross in Glendalough ... As Kevin knelt and prayed, a blackbird mistook his outstretched hand for some kind of roost and swooped down upon it, laid a clutch of eggs in it and proceeded to nest in it as if it were the branch of a tree. Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledging grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder. Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. ~ Seamus Heaney

All force strives forward to work far and wide
To live and grow and ever to expand;
Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side
By the world's flux and swept along like sand:
In this internal storm and outward tide
We hear a promise, hard to understand:
From the compulsion that all creatures binds,
Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Daughter of Merrow, leave your sleep,

The ways of childhood no more to keep.

The dream will die, a nightmare rise,

Sleep no more, child, open your eyes...


Daughter of Merrow, chosen one,

The end begins, your time has come.

The sands run out, our spell unwinds,

Inch by inch, our chant unbinds...


Daughter of Merrow, find the five

Brave enough to keep hope alive.

One whose heart will hold the light,

One possessed of a prophet's sight.

One who does not yet believe,

Thus has no choice but to deceive.

One with spirit sure and strong,

One who sings all creatures' songs.

Together find the talismans

Belonging to the six who ruled,

Hidden under treacherous waters

After light and darkness dueled.

These pieces must not be united,

Not in anger, greed, or rage.

They were scattered by brave Merrow,

Lest they unlock destruction's cage.

Come to us from seas and rivers,

Become one mind, one heart, one bond.

Before the waters, and all creatures in them,

Are laid to waste by Abbadon! ~ Jennifer Donnelly

God, my God, omnipotent King, I humbly adore thee. Thou art King of kings, Lord of lords. Thou art the Judge of every age. Thou art the Redeemer of souls. Thou art the Liberator of those who believe. Thou art the Hope of those who toil. Thou art the Comforter of those in sorrow. Thou art the Way to those who wander. Thou art Master to the nations. Thou art the Creator of all creatures. Thou art the Lover of all good. Thou art the Prince of all virtues. Thou art the joy of all Thy saints. Thou art life perpetual. Thou art joy in truth. Thou art the exultation in the eternal fatherland. Thou art the Light of light. Thou art the Fountain of holiness. Thou art the glory of God the Father in the height. Thou art Savior of the world. Thou art the plenitude of the Holy Spirit. Thou sittest at the right hand of God the Father on the throne, reigning for ever. ~ St Patrick

I welcome all creatures of the world with grace. ~ Hildegard Of Bingen

For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse. ~ Peter Ackroyd

They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial. And heavenly it had been so long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. The sin against the body - it was for that they wept in chief; the centuries of wrong against the muscles and the nerves, and those five portals by which we can alone apprehend - glozing it over with talk of evolution, until the body was white pap, the home of ideas as colourless, last sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars. ~ E.M. Forster

He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, he never suffers; because when he sees all creatures within his true Self, then jealousy, grief and hatred vanish. ~ Paramananda

That which I might endeavour to find in other ways seeks me incessantly and gives itself to me through all creatures. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

Which religion gives the greatest joy to God? That which inspires human beings to practice Ahimsa and compassion to all creatures. ~ Vallabha Acharya

If you are not radiant with joy and friendliness, if you are not filled to overflowing with love and goodwill for all beings and all creatures and all creation, one thing is certain: you do not know God! ~ Peace Pilgrim