Gretel Ehrlich Quotes

There is some level on which this life must occasionally become repugnant and unappetizing to you and you must step back from it. And then you have a new relationship with it, and then you step back into it from a different angle - with a new appetite - and then you find the next leg of your journey.

Praise the sea, on shore remain.

The San Diego region in many ways is defined by our relationship with the ocean. It's our front yard and a beautiful playground for families and visitors. It should be clean, safe, and inviting.

I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year's Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it.

Imagine a master painting that's never finished...when you can only build on previous work, you become limited by what you can paint...If you are in the midst of painting a forest full of tall tress and hanging vines, it is rather difficult to wake up the next day and suddenly turn that paining into the beach and ocean...We have to treat each day like a black canvas on which we can paint. Yesterday might have been paining flowers, but today you can paint cars or horses. A new day represents a chance for renewal.

I didn't grow up in the ocean -- as a matter of fact -- near the ocean -- I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing.

I like being by the ocean.

My friend asked me I ever swam with dolphins. I was like, 'Yeah, of course. What distance are we talking about from the dolphins? Because the last time I was in the ocean, I'm pretty sure I swam with most of them.'

It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly.

It is right that you should begin again every day. There is no better way to complete the spiritual life than to be ever beginning it over again.

I do think that everybody deserves a second chance.

Nothing ever seems impossible in spring, you know.

Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.

Youth is beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.

Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.

Sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another.

An old friend is a new house.

The naturalists of yore esteemed the ocean to be a treasury of wonders, and sought therein for monstrosities and organisms contrary to the law of nature, such as they interpreted it.

Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be - you get a fresh start, your slate's wiped clean. Count yourself lucky - God holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from Him.

Sweet to think on it, that when we are last weary of all this world there is the rising sun

Behold, I make all things new.

That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was a magic about the sea. People were drawn to it. People wanted to love by it, swim in it, play in it, look at it. It was a living thing that was as unpredictable as a great stage actor: it could be calm and welcoming, opening its arms to embrace it's audience one moment, but then could explode with its stormy tempers, flinging people around, wanting them out, attacking coastlines, breaking down islands.

The world is always young again for just a few moments at the dawn.