Gretel Ehrlich Quotes

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.

...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.

The Greek philosophies teach us that we are a combination of dark and light, good and evil, and murderer and savior, hmm? And until we know this completely about ourselves we cannot love well, and we cannot forgive ourselves.

The most dangerous thing you can do is know who you are.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Girl power in my mind is to let girls be exactly what they are. Let them be angry. Let them be resentful. And rebellious. Let them be hard and soft and loving and sad and silly. Let them be wrong. Let them be right. Let them be everything. because, they are everything.

Instead of trying to modify what nature brought us, we embraced it.

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.

We bless and curse ourselves.

When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

Don't try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.

The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive.

But, outside of being a sweet little girl, she was awfully dumb and capable of doing horrible things.

Any woodthrush shows it - he sings, not to fill the world, but because he is filled.

Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.

Love so that you may actually be what you innately are.

A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

Time moves only forward, never back. We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away. You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

Do we dare be ourselves? That is the question that counts.

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

When I stop doing the things that make me unhappy, I will experience the happiness that is that natural state of being. See, I don't think we were created with some pain and misery and whatever. I think we were created by whatever this thing is, when it extended itself, and, here we are. But I pile on so many misconceptions that I end up uncomfortable in my own skin.

We have forgotten what rocks and plants still know - we have forgotten how to be - to be still - to be ourselves - to be where life is here and now