Chew The Cud Quotes

If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible, But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Passion is a rare flower that grows on the precipice of death. A few snatch it, and the rest are like an ox chewing its cud in a field.

I was thinking about the cow thing. About how hanging on to an ex-boyfriend is like chewing your cud until somebody drops a fresh bale of hay in front of you. Or something like that.

To be honest, I had been restless...The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor--the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.

The sheep, I guess demented with love, didn't object to this at all. Casimir somehow found time to pull up some grass for it, and it lay down and munched its grass and then chewed its cud like hanging out with dogs [...] was something it always did. Maybe it thought other sheep were boring and that it had finally found its spiritual home.

...and Andy, gloomy and self-devouring, sat at his desk and chewed the cud of memory.

The goal is to get your estrogen where it should be so you don’t have to hang out in social support groups that do nothing but chew the cud on how miserable they are without estrogen.

Even when we're sitting still, with no external stimuli, an endless internal dialogue may be going on in our head. we're constantly consuming our thoughts. Cows, goats, and buffalo chew their food, swallow it, then regurgitate and rechew it multiple times. We may not be cows or buffalo, but we ruminate just the same on our thoughts - unfortunately, primarily negative thoughts. We eat them, and then we bring them up to chew again and again, like a cow chewing its cud.

His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.

Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body? It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal. "Braised in a white wine sauce?" "Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper. "But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer." Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively. "Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again. "Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added. "You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford. "Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. "I don't mean anything." "That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard." "What's the problem, Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump. "I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to," said Arthur. "It's heartless." "Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod. "That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "All right," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..." The Universe raged about him in its death throes. "I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered. "May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months." "A green salad," said Arthur emphatically. "A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur. "Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?" "Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am." It managed a very slight bow. "Glass of water please," said Arthur. "Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years." The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle. "A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said. "I'll just nip off and shoot myself." He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur. "Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane." It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen. A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming steaks.

they chewed on the cud.

You are not a cow, and I am no apostle of cud chewing.

The voice is silent. The disc scrapes a little, then stops. Delivered from a troublesome dream, the café ruminates, chews the cud over the pleasure of existing.

3Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a thing now of the past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer and the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.

My timing is perfect, and I wind up in a traffic jam. The cars around me are driven by fat cows and bellowing bulls. We roll along, six mph. I can run faster than this. We brake. They chew their cud and moo into their phones until the herd shifts gears and rolls forward again.

CALVIN: Here's an ad for a new gum called "Hyperbubble," and it says, "If you're not chewing Hyperbubble, you might as well be chewing your cud. Ooh, great copy! CALVIN: Gosh, am I cool enough to chew Hyperbubble? Maybe I'm NOT. Maybe if you chew Hyperbubble, you BECOME cool CALVIN: Or maybe if you chew it, everyone ASSUMES you're cool, so it doesn't matter if you are or not! What do you think? Should I buy some? HOBBES: If your emotional security depends on satisfying a need you didn't have until you read the ad, go ahead. CALVIN: I think I will! Boy, I'm glad I get this magazine.

talked. “Is my accent so obvious?” she asked Kitay. “It’s getting better,” he said. “Just try rolling the ends of your words more. Shorten your vowels. And add the r sound where it doesn’t exist. That’s a good rule of thumb.” “Ar. Arrr.” Rin gagged. “Why do Sinegardians have to sound like they’re chewing cud?

For a rabbi to officiate at the marriage of a person to an animal, the animal has to chew its cud and have a cloven hoof. A camel. A rabbi can marry a person to a camel. A cow. Any kind of cattle. Sheep. Can’t marry someone to a rabbit, however, because even though a rabbit chews its cud, it doesn’t have a cloven hoof.

You could imagine the deaths of these dull heifers roaming the Save-Rite, these sad mothers with nothing to do but eat and fold laundry with tiny, stubby fingers sticking out of their huge bloated hands. Their lives must feel like such ineffectual blither blather. Did they even think things to themselves? Why did they look so idiotic, like domesticated animals, chewing their cud until the slaughter, half asleep?

Superfluity was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these hedges, these paths. Vainly I strove to compute the number of the chestnut trees, or their distance from the Velleda, or their height as compared with that of the plane trees; each of them escaped from the pattern I made for it, overflowed from it or withdrew. And I too among them, vile, languorous, obscene, chewing the cud of my thoughts, I too was superfluous. [I is you or I or anyone.] Luckily I did not feel it, I only understood it, but I felt uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it. . . . I thought vaguely of doing away with myself, to do away with at least one of these superfluous existences. But my death – my corpse, my blood poured out on this gravel, among these plants, in this smiling garden – would have been superfluous as well. I was superfluous to all eternity.

TWO MINUTES LATER, two cud-chewing sheep raised their heads as a bike passed them on the road just outside their fence. “Did you see that?” the one cud-chewing sheep said to the other. “Two people on one bike. Isn’t that cheating?” The other sheep blinked his eyes sleepily. “Baaa, why? It makes the bike even heavier when you’re going uphill. Besides, they’re dead last.” “That’s not the point,” the one sheep said. “Is it allowed?” The other chewed his cud for a bit while he contemplated this. “No idea,” he finally said. “I’m a sheep, you know? We don’t know that kind of thing.

For example, measles virus is most closely related to the virus causing rinderpest. That nasty epidemic disease affects cattle and many wild cud-chewing mammals, but not humans. Measles in turn doesn’t afflict cattle. The close similarity of the measles virus to the rinderpest virus suggests that the latter transferred from cattle to humans and then evolved into the measles virus by changing its properties to adapt to us. That transfer is not at all surprising, considering that many peasant farmers live and sleep close to cows and their feces, urine, breath, sores, and blood. Our intimacy with cattle has been going on for the 9,000 years since we domesticated them—ample time for the rinderpest virus to discover us nearby. As

Do you not see — talking up this plea of Sattva, the country has been slowly and slowly drowned in the ocean of Tamas or dark ignorance? Where the most dull want to hide their stupidity by covering it with a false desire for the highest knowledge which is beyond all activities, either physical or mental; where one, born and bred in lifelong laziness, wants to throw the veil of renunciation over his own unfitness for work; where the most diabolical try to make their cruelty appear, under the cloak of austerity, as a part of religion; where no one has an eye upon his own incapacity, but everyone is ready to lay the whole blame on others; where knowledge consists only in getting some books by heart, genius consists in chewing the cud of others' thoughts, and the highest glory consists in taking the name of ancestors: do we require any other proof to show that that country is being day by day drowned in utter Tamas?

Life became harsh for Marius. To eat his coats and watch was nothing. He chewed the inexpressible cud of bitterness–a horrible thing, which includes days without bread, sleepless nights, evenings without a candle, a hearth without a fire, weeks without labor, a future without hope, a coat out at the elbows, an old hat that makes young girls laugh, the door found shut in your face at night because you have not paid your rent, the insolence of the porter and the landlord, the jibes of neighbors, humiliations, outraged self-respect, any drudgery acceptable, disgust, bitterness, prostration–Marius learned how one swallows all these things and how they are often the only things one has to swallow. At that time of life, when man has need of pride, because he has need of love, he felt mocked because he was badly dressed and ridiculed because he was poor. At the age when youth swells the heart with an imperial pride, he more than once dropped his eyes to his worn out boots, and experienced the undeserved shame and poignant blushes of poverty. Wonderful and terrible trial, from which the feeble come out infamous, from which the strong come out sublime. Crucible into which destiny casts a man whenever she desires a scoundrel or a demigod.

Gravity tends to pull fertility downhill. Hence fertile valleys and infertile hilltops. But wait, many times the most fertile soils are on hilltops. How could that be? Herbivores graze in the fertile valleys and then trudge up to the hilltops to chew their cuds and lounge. Why the hilltop? To watch for those nasty predators. The herbivore-grass, predator-prey relationships are foundational to moving those biomass-stored sunbeams around on the landscape. Without animals, the anti-gravitational movement would be impossible. Without the predator, it wouldn't be incentivized. Truly, this whole ecosystem is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Signs of Hokkaido's muscular dairy industry tattoo the terrain everywhere: packs of Holsteins chew cud unblinkingly in the sunlight, ice cream shops proffer hyperseason flavors to hungry leaf gazers, and giant silos offer advice to the calcium deficient: "Drink Hokkaido Milk!" Even better than drinking the island's milk is drinking its yogurt, which you can do at Milk Kobo, a converted red barn with cows and tractors and generous views of Mount Yotei, which locals call Ezo Fuji. Kobo sells all manner of dairy products, but you're here for the drinkable yogurt, which has a light current of sweetness and a deep lactic tang, a product so good that the second it hits my lips, I give up water for the week.

The milking machines sounded tranquilizing, and there was the collegiality of seventy animal spirits thriving, warming the barn with cud-chewing, nose-snuffling, and sisterly mammalhood.

Cow’s blood will do, but we prefer human. You know because it’s stronger. Cows are just dumb beasts, chewing their cud and making milk, but humans, especially virgins, have so much more in their blood. All their thoughts and desires spice it. Virgins are the best because they have all that pent up frustration and need added in.” Mary narrowed her eyes. “Yes, virgins have the best blood. Are you a virgin?” The guy’s eyes about popped out of his head. He stammered a no and fled. His friends called out after him, but he kept going. A small wicked smile crossed her face as she hoisted her book bag and began shoving her way through the hall to her fifth period class.

We may not be cows or buffalo, but we ruminate just the same on our thoughts—unfortunately, primarily negative thoughts. We eat them, and then we bring them up to chew again and again, like a cow chewing its cud.

We should all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace, if we were more alone. Meditation chews the cud and extracts the real nutriment from the mental food gathered elsewhere.

Why do things happen the way they do? Is there some kind of order in all this chaos that we just don't see, or is it all, as the mathematically minded people would like us to believe, just random coincidence? If you put one hundred apes in a room, they'll tell you, with one hundred typewriters, and given an infinite amount of time and bananas, one of them would eventually churn out the complete Oxford dictionary. It's all statistical math and probability. The odds of winning the lottery are greater than the odds of getting struck by lightning, but someone wins, don't they? And people get hit by lightning disturbingly more often that you would think. Their point is, eventually all things happen. No matter how philosophically unprejudiced you are, you can't argue with statistical probabilities. But you can certainly give the mathematicians some substantial cud to chew on, can't you? For instance, sure, everything may be eventual from a statistical point of view, but what happens to the formula if you plug in when a particular thing happens? The fortuitousness of the timing? Or combine a particular coincidence with other seemingly non-related coincidences that might have occurred within the same general time frame? We've all had it happen. It's one of our favorite phrases: "Why me? Why now?" Well, when you take the "when" into account, all kinds of very interesting and un-mathematical things begins to happen. The coincidence becomes too coincidental to be a coincidence.

Sean had never stared into as many blank-eyed faces before. Throughout the high school civics talk, he felt as if he were speaking to the kids in a foreign language, one they had no intention of learning. Scrambling for a way to reach his audience, he ad-libbed, tossing out anecdotes about his own years at Coral Beach High. He confessed that as a teenager his decision to run for student government had been little more than a wily excuse to approach the best-looking girls. But what ultimately hooked his interest in student government was the startling discovery that the kids at school, all so different—jocks, nerds, preppies, and brains—could unite behind a common cause. During his senior year, when he’d been president of the student council, Coral Beach High raised seven thousand dollars to aid Florida’s hurricane victims. Wouldn’t that be something to feel good about? Sean asked his teenage audience. The response he received was as rousing as a herd of cows chewing their cud. Except this group was blowing big pink bubbles with their gum. The question and answer period, too, turned out to be a joke. The teens’ main preoccupation: his salary and whether he got driven around town in a chauffeured limo. When they learned he was willing to work for peanuts and that he drove an eight-year-old convertible, he might as well have stamped a big fat L on his forehead. He was weak-kneed with relief when at last the principal mounted the auditorium steps and thanked Sean for his electrifying speech. While Sean was politically seasoned enough to put the morning’s snafus behind him, and not worry overmuch that the apathetic bunch he’d just talked to represented America’s future voters, it was the high school principal’s long-winded enthusiasm, telling Sean how much of an inspiration he was for these kids, that truly set Sean’s teeth on edge. And made him even later for the final meeting of the day, the coral reef advisory panel.

As though on cue, two guys came around the bush. One was the man in camouflage pants Myron had noticed earlier. The other guy was a big brawler type with a tourniquet-tight black T-shirt, a Cro-Magnon forehead, and arms as big as ham hocks. The brawler was chewing tobacco like a cow with a cud and playing to type; he was actually cracking his knuckles. “You’re

I thought those beasts were types of men; the clean, types of them that were the people of God; but the unclean, types of such as were the children of the wicked one.  Now I read, that the clean beasts chewed the cud; that is, thought I, they show us, we must feed upon the word of God: they also parted the hoof.  I thought that signified, we must part, if we would be saved, with the ways of ungodly men.  And also, in further reading about them, I found, that though we did chew the cud, as the hare; yet if we walked with claws, like a dog; or if we did part the hoof, like the swine, yet if we did not chew the cud, as the sheep, we were still, for all that, but unclean: for I thought the hare to be a type of those that talk of the word, yet walk in the ways of sin; and that the swine was like him that parted with his outward pollutions, but still wanteth the word of faith, without which there could be no way of salvation, let a man be never so devout.  Deut. xiv. 

Chew like a Cow I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. —PSALM 119:15     We want God’s time. But are we willing to give Him a portion of our day, our thoughts? Meditation takes effort, discipline, and the willingness to make space for God. We are in so much of a hurry that we just can’t seem to fit meditation into our busy schedules. Oh, most of us want an intimate relationship with the Lord, but are we ready to give of our time? After all…we are busy. We’ve got to make more money, buy bigger toys, and race our children from one activity to another. I get tired just thinking about all the activities, don’t you? Those activities and the scrambling we do to get from one to the next start to breed impatience. I’ve even heard people complain at a fast-food restaurant that they need to speed up the service! No wonder we aren’t able to meditate on God’s Word. We are in too much of a hurry. Contrast this idea of constantly hurrying with the idea given in today’s verse. It says we are to meditate on God’s precepts. To meditate means to dwell on a passage. Sort of like a cow chewing her cud. Why do cows spend so much time chewing their cud? Cows first fill their stomachs with grass and other food. Then they begin the long chew-and-rechew process. It seems painfully slow, but this process turns the food into rich, creamy milk. Time consuming? Yes. But it’s a must if you want good milk. That’s the way it is with us Christians. If we want to grow, we must slow down and meditate on God’s principles. We need to read His precious truths, then ponder their meaning and influence and wonder. Take comfort in knowing that there is rest and renewal for all of us when we meditate on God’s precepts. Prayer: Father God, thank You for giving me a quiet time so I can meditate on Your words. Your principles have given me such peace—for one thing, I’ve wanted to slow down. Amen.   Action: Slow down—meditate. Chew on God’s Word and truths.

Muddy Waters he play in the river Joan Rivers she play in the mud Swami guru play in a big salad bowl Counting lettuce and chewing his cud

The ruminant, reason, chews a poisoned cud.

became aware that the old black bull was lying on his side on the ground some distance from the herd. He looked dead but the odd twitch of his tail indicated that there was still some semblance of life . . . About an hour later when passing Rose Cottage we became aware that a number of the cattle, being led by the young black bull, had left the main herd and were making for the old bull who was obviously in a distressed state. The group certainly gave the impression of being genuinely concerned and were nudging and making physical contact, providing some form of comfort to him in what was a dire situation . . . [I]t is difficult to find the language that can touch that experience . . . Their behavior expressed compassion, grief, comfort and a willingness to afford assistance. I can only describe the actions of the cattle as reverential. Such glimpses into the unseen, unrecorded culture of the cattle that has formed up on Swona in our absence afford us insight into the true nature of an animal too often dismissed as a dim-witted, cud-chewing automaton. They give us insight into the weight afforded to death among a species we farm and slaughter on an industrial scale. If we do not see the remnants of this behavior among those more carefully tended, it is because we do not give them the chance: they have not the freedom to demonstrate it; they do not typically see out their lifespans to their natural conclusions.

The guards usually sing or whistle continuously, so that the sleeping herd may know that a friend and not an enemy is keeping vigil over their dreams. A sleeping herd of cattle make a pretty picture on a clear moonlight night, chewing their cuds and grunting and blowing over contented stomachs. The night horses soon learn their duty, and a rider may fall asleep or doze along in the saddle, but the horses will maintain their distance in their leisurely, sentinel rounds.

Meditation is the chewing upon the truths we have heard. The beasts in the old law which did not chew the cud were unclean; the professing Christian who does not by meditation chew the cud, is to be accounted unclean. Meditation is like the watering of the seed; it makes the fruits of grace to flourish.

Women are twice as likely to suffer depression as men are, because on the average they think about problems in ways that amplify depression. Men tend to act rather than reflect, but women tend to contemplate their depression, mulling it over and over, trying to analyze it and determine its source. Psychologists call this process of obsessive analysis rumination, a word whose first meaning is “chewing the cud.” Ruminant animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, chew a cud composed of regurgitated, partially digested food—not a very appealing image of what people who ruminate do with their thoughts, but an exceedingly apt one. Rumination combined with pessimistic explanatory style is the recipe for severe depression. This ends the bad news. The good news is that both pessimistic explanatory style and rumination can be changed, and changed permanently. Cognitive therapy can create optimistic explanatory style and curtail rumination. It prevents new depressions by teaching the skills needed to bounce back from defeat. You will see how it works on others, and then you will learn how to use its techniques on yourself.

The old man whittled as he contemplated nature. The heavy antlered deer chewed his cud in the shade as he scanned the terrain below. The codger ruminated. The ruminant cogitated. God’s creation was in balance.

Cyrene was glad to. That meant more enticing targets for predators. She drove her herds to dangerous places, hoping to attract bigger and badder monsters to fight. The sheep and cows weren’t even worried about it. They trusted Cyrene completely. One cow would get a whiff of danger and ask another cow, “What’s that?” “Oh,” the second cow would say, “that’s just a pack of wolves.” “Won’t they eat us? Should we panic and stampede?” “No,” said the second cow. “Watch.” Cyrene came hurtling out of the darkness, wailing like a banshee, and slaughtered the entire wolf pack. “Oh, cool,” said the first cow. “Yeah, she’s awesome. Want to chew some more cud?

One cow would get a whiff of danger and ask another cow, “What’s that?” “Oh,” the second cow would say, “that’s just a pack of wolves.” “Won’t they eat us? Should we panic and stampede?” “No,” said the second cow. “Watch.” Cyrene came hurtling out of the darkness, wailing like a banshee, and slaughtered the entire wolf pack. “Oh, cool,” said the first cow. “Yeah, she’s awesome. Want to chew some more cud?

It was good to be alone. Really alone, without other people around you to let you imagine that your life had mingled with theirs. But that never was true. Even together, people were as solitary as cows in a field chewing their own cud.

all she saw was a small herd of cud-chewing kine, observing her with non-judgemental curiosity,

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Truly fulfilled and thriving people don’t look within for answers. They find their joy in God’s law and meditate on it often. The Hebrew for “meditates” here has nothing to do with sitting in lotus position, thumbs to index fingers, and chanting “omm.” This is not the mind-emptying meditation of the East, but the mind-filling exercise of the ancient Jews. The root word means to mutter to oneself, chew like a cow chews its cud, and ponder what God says is true until his thoughts become our thoughts.

Man is the only amateur animal; all the others are professionals. They have no leisure and do not desire it. When the cow has finished eating she chews the cud; when she has finished chewing she sleeps; when she has finished sleeping she eats again. She is a machine for turning grass into calves and milk—in other words, for producing more cows. The lion cannot stop hunting, nor the beaver building dams, nor the bee making honey. When God made the beasts dumb He saved the world from infinite boredom, for if they could speak they would all of them, all day, talk nothing but shop.