Manners are like zero in arithmetic. They may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal of value to everything else.
Freya StarkRead
The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the transient nature of life and its value compared to static human creations.
Freya Stark suggests that living things, despite their ephemeral existence, fulfill a deeper purpose than man-made creations. While art and human works are static and unchanging, the lifeforms around us embody transformation and the shared experience of existence, reminding us of our own mortality and the transient beauty of life.
Themes
TransienceLifeNatureArtGrowthChangeMortality
In practice
Example use cases
During a nature retreat, one might quote this to emphasize the beauty of fleeting moments.
More from Freya Stark
All quotes βPerhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.
Freya StarkRead
All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand-any dog, child or horse would recognize the kindness of it.
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The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares (...) To avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.
Freya StarkRead
One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.
Freya StarkRead
The portion we see of human beings is very small: their formats and faces, voices and words.... beyond these, like an immense dark continent, lies all that has made them.
Freya StarkRead
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