It does not demean men to want to be what they imagine the wolf to be, but it does demean them to kill the animal for it. Barry Lopez More Quotes by Barry Lopez More Quotes From Barry Lopez Because you have seen something doesn't mean you can explain it. Differing interpretations will always abound, even when good minds come to bear. The kernel of indisputable information is a dot in space; interpretations grow out of the desire to make this point a line, to give it direction. The directions in which it can be sent, the uses to which it can be put by a culturally, professionally, and geographically diverse society are almost without limit. The possibilities make good scientists chary. Barry Lopez diverse-societyspacemean For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles. Barry Lopez strugglemotivationalinspirational If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. Barry Lopez inspirational-lifeadultsresponsibility The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you Barry Lopez influencepowerfulimagination Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves. Barry Lopez despisequalitycentury The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love. Barry Lopez hateoppositeslove-is No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself. Barry Lopez darknessmindblood What does it mean to grow rich? Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a ‘fortune,’ which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north? Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one’s homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond’s Bay wealth was? Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe? Barry Lopez entrepreneuradventuremean The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don't know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It's not that I'm not interested-it's not where I live. I live inside the story. Barry Lopez storieswritinglooks The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves. Barry Lopez urgesunderstandingland In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us. Barry Lopez landignorancefall We keep each other alive with our stories. We need to share them, as much as we need to share food. We also require for our health the presence of good companions. One of the most extraordinary things about the land is that it knows this—and it compels language from some of us so that as a community we may converse about this or that place, and speak of the need. Barry Lopez communitylandneeds Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall. Barry Lopez summerspringfall It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe. Barry Lopez imaginationwisegiving Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty. Barry Lopez patternsedendivine The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis. Barry Lopez gapsapplestemptation One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. Barry Lopez contradictionmiddleinspirational-life The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason. Barry Lopez intelligentreasonlove I lay there knowing something eerie ties us to the world of animals. Sometimes the animals pull you backward into it. You share hunger and fear with them like salt in blood. Barry Lopez eerieanimalblood Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you? Barry Lopez forgivinglandanimal
