Charles Eastman Quotes

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

As corny as it sounds, and not to sound like a hippie, I think there are these spirit forces in nature, and we have to be careful not to offend them.

I've always been interested in oral traditions and mythological stories and legends from antiquity that have to do with nature, attempts to explain mysterious or puzzling, or very striking phenomena from nature. Things that people observed or heard about in nature.

I've always loved the idea of mythologies linked to or underlying everyday life, like the kami gods of Shintoism, where every rock, tree and stream has its own little god associated with it.

If you manifest your true self through nature and your normal surroundings, I find that the most eerie. Like when you see birds suddenly start flying in a different direction or when you see moths forming weird shapes, I think that's the weirdest way to let yourself be known.

Some may claim that is it unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as miracles. But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things subservient to the rule of law.

If you look back to the earliest religions, before they got organized and started building churches and amassing wealth, they all sprang from the same place - they were inspired by nature.

In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power: we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.

Government … becomes the rational art of minimizing the inevitable conflicts of primal irrational wills against one another and against the forces of nature at large

Science offers us the possibility of understanding natural rhythms and events that must have seemed like the work of angry and unpredictable gods to our ancestors.

The Indians believe all things have spirit - even the hail that comes from the sky is spirit. If you believe that, which I implicitly do, everything is alive.

I think working with the primal elements of fire and earth appealed greatly to my father because of the almost magical results.

The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves.

When primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature.

Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.

I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.

How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

Every ripple on the ocean, every leaf on every tree, every sand dune in the desert, every power we never see.

When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.

It is enough for me by day To walk the same bright earth with him; Enough that over us by night The same great roof of stars is dim. I do not hope to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea -- It is enough to feel his love Blow by like music over me.

Nature is millions of things. And there are millions of ways of understanding its preoccupations.

Imagine the clouds dripping Dig a hole in your garden to put them in

Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events.