Elephants Inspirational Quotes

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent!

When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.

Apples to oranges, the act of comparing your life to another’s is more like comparing an elephant to an apple, it makes no sense to compare someone’s life that you have no knowledge about to that of your own, of which in all earnest is not something that you completely understand yourself.

Never, oh! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those that we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

Elephants love reunions. They recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy. There's bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine.

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

You can't understand Twenty-first-Century Politics with an Eighteenth-Century Brain.

Be like the elephant my friend - with a strong character and a gentle soul.

If you do not have a memory like an elephant, leave impressions like one.

COBB: What do you want from us? SAITO: Inception. Arthur raises his eyebrows. Cobb is poker-faced. SAITO: Is it possible? ARTHUR: Of course not. SAITO: If you can steal an idea from someone's mind, why can't you plant one there instead? ARTHUR: Okay, here's planting an idea: I say to you, "Don't think about elephants." (Saito nods) What are you thinking about? SAITO: Elephants. ARTHUR: Right. But it's not your idea because you know I gave it to you. SAITO: You could plant it subconsciously- ARTHUR: The subject's mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake. COBB: No, it isn't. SAITO: Can you do it? COBB: I won't do it. SAITO: In exchange, I'll give you the information you were paid to steal. COBB: Are you giving me a choice? Because I can find my own way to square things with Cobol. SAITO: Then you do have a choice. COBB: And I choose to leave.

Big elephants get stuck in small pits. Don’t lose your self-confidence when petty problems of life overwhelm you. You’re the big elephant.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.

tamarind trees

Fragmentos de céu me espiam através das folhas, um mosaico azul e verde que se altera suavemente com o vento. Fixo a vista ali e me deixo perder o foco, olhando para além das folhas e dos galhos. Um esquilo salta pesadamente, a cauda bem empinada, cruzando meu campo de visão. Water for Elephants, p.22

All around the edges of the platform where she sat, elephants stood patiently waiting for their breakfast. Occasionally, one would grunt or snort or flap its ears, but otherwise, they were as quiet as apparitions.

Good happens, every morning that the sun rises, every night that the moon shines, every moment that the earth turns. And if you're brave enough to look in the elephant's eye, you see, finally, that behind the sadness there is joy.

It is here too that I learn about a survey carried out among a group of 95 year olds. If they could do it all again, these wise elders were asked, what would they do differently? They would take more risks. They would take more time for reflection. And they would leave a legacy.

Many more villagers, who have seen an elephant for the first time in their lives, give absurd exaggerations regarding his size, weight, and height. One of them describes him as ‘a fundament!’. Another, elaborating, alludes to the term ‘firmament,’ because of the elephant’s hugeness. He felt as though the sky was obliterated from his vision. The last to be interviewed by the local TV station swears that he sensed the world lean forward as the elephant came closer and tilt backwards as the beast walked away. This large mammal ambles purposefully. He pays no heed to the crowded silence following him in stealthy consciousness. One of the villagers, a woman often suspected of dabbling in witchcraft, talks of her inspired theory: that this was no elephant, more like a human on a holy mission of avenging justice. Two other witnesses, neither having had any contact with the woman, speak in substantiation of the woman’s claims, giving as evidence the observation that the elephant turned around when someone said something in Somali. Several villagers will not comment, afraid of a fitting retribution should they do so.

Psychologists say the best way to handle children at this stage of development is not to answer their questions directly but instead to tell them a story. As pediatrician Alan Greene explained, “After conversing with thousands of children, I’ve decided that what they really mean is, ‘That’s interesting to me. Let’s talk about that together. Tell me more, please?’ Questions are a child’s way of expressing love and trust. They are a child’s way of starting a conversation. So instead of simply insisting over and over again that the object of my son’s attention is, in fact, an elephant, I might tell him about how, in India, elephants are symbols of good luck, or about how some say elephants have the best memories of all the animals. I might tell him about the time I saw an elephant spin a basketball on the tip of his trunk, or about how once there was an elephant named Horton who heard a Who. I might tell him that once upon a time, there was an elephant and four blind men; each man felt a different part of the elephant’s body: the ears, the tail, the side, and the tusk . . .

To me, the word wisdom means ancient knowledge. It’s the kind of knowledge you not only see but feel when you look into the eyes of an elephant or stop for a moment to marvel at the deep wrinkles on its skin, both of which I believe contain the truths learned from each intentional step their feet and those of their ancestors have placed upon the earth.

on his regular circuit, to have cultivated some favorite flowers and

sometimes it’s not necessary to know what elephants or people are thinking, as long as one honors what they are feeling.

There are still so many things that we don’t understand about these remarkably intelligent and sensitive creatures.

An elephant does not need to pick a fight to let the whole jungle know of its strength.

Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams. -John Merrick

She has no hand for me to hold, but I want to hold her trunk; to tell her that everything will be okay; to beg her to stay safe.

In the elephants' rumbles and in the feel of living ivory, I've found a life that has real meaning to me - and there can be no escape. Not now anyway.

It's satisfying when visitors leave with a deep respect for elephants and a new-found desire to stand up for their welfare.

There is a downside to knowing elephants so intimately. They've already touched a place in my heart so deep that I sometimes feel almost paralysed by this passion.

The big tuskers could splash into the water but no one would follow them. What was needed was confidence rather than bravado.

I am committed to contributing to the educational growth of our youth.

The most dangerous predator in Africa, I’ve come to realise, is not the lion. Nor can the hippo, the buffalo or the elephant hope to compete. The most dangerous animal by far is man. Hwange

The elephant was called Marlene. Mutti got to name her because she was working with the elephants in the zoo. She named her after a singer she loved, that many people loved in those days. Marlene Dietrich.

They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies... the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you.

Trees are like people and give the answers to the way of Man. They grow from the top down. Children, like treetops, have flexibility of youth, and sway more than larger adults at the bottom. They are more vulnerable to the elements, and are put to the test of survival by life's strong winds, rain, freezing cold, and hot sun. Constantly challenged. As they mature, they journey down the tree, strengthening the family unit until one day they have become big hefty branches. In the stillness below, having weathered the seasons, they now relax in their old age, no longer subject to the stress from above. It's always warmer and more enclosed at the base of the tree. The members remain protected and strong as they bear the weight and give support to the entire tree. They have the endurance.

We talk evocatively about our own lives and how different it all might have been. But there can be no regrets. Because no matter how we got here, we are three very different women who somehow became special friends, still sharing extraordinary times that we'll cherish forever.

If you believe in the eighteenth century view of the mind, you will look and act wimpy. You will think that all you need to do is give people the facts and the figures and they will reach the right conclusion. You will think that all you need to do is point out where their interests lie, and they will act politically to maximize them. You will believe in polling and focus groups: you will believe that if you ask people what their interests are, they will be aware of them and will tell you, and will vote on it. You will not have any need to appeal to emotion---indeed, to do so would be wrong! You will not have to speak of values; facts and figures will suffice. You will not have to change people's brains; their reason should be enough. You will not have to frame the facts; they will speak for themselves. You just have to get the facts to them...

We use the effect of centrifugal forces on matter to offer insight into the rotation rate of extreme cosmic objects. Consider pulsars. With some rotating at upward of a thousand revolutions per second, we know that they cannot be made of household ingredients, or they would spin themselves apart. In fact, if a pulsar rotated any faster, say 4,500 revolutions per second, its equator would be moving at the speed of light, which tells you that this material is unlike any other. To picture a pulsar, imagine the mass of the Sun packed into a ball the size of Manhattan. If that’s hard to do, then maybe it’s easier if you imagine stuffing about a hundred million elephants into a Chapstick casing. To reach this density, you must compress all the empty space that atoms enjoy around their nucleus and among their orbiting electrons. Doing so will crush nearly all (negatively charged) electrons into (positively charged) protons, creating a ball of (neutrally charged) neutrons with a crazy-high surface gravity. Under such conditions, a neutron star’s mountain range needn’t be any taller than the thickness of a sheet of paper for you to exert more energy climbing it than a rock climber on Earth would exert ascending a three-thousand-mile-high cliff. In short, where gravity is high, the high places tend to fall, filling in the low places—a phenomenon that sounds almost biblical, in preparing the way for the Lord: “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain” (Isaiah 40:4). That’s a recipe for a sphere if there ever was one. For all these reasons, we expect pulsars to be the most perfectly shaped spheres in the universe.

Inspired by the controversy, in 1796 Cuvier wrote a landmark paper, Note on the Species of Living and Fossil Elephants, in which he put forward for the first time a formal theory of extinctions. His belief was that from time to time the Earth experienced global catastrophes in which groups of creatures were wiped out. For religious people, including Cuvier himself, the idea raised uncomfortable

At once the senior pilot arose in his mighty bulk and began to struggle into his coat, with awe-inspiring upheavals. The stranger and I hurried impulsively to his assistance, and directly we laid our hands on him he became perfectly quiescent. We had to raise our arms very high, and to make efforts. It was like caparisoning a docile elephant. With a "Thanks, gentlemen," he dived under and squeezed himself through the door in a great hurry.

Even animals have a conscience. Those in the jungle KILL only to eat, not live to kill. This is why we often see packs of predators focusing on just one kill, instead of targeting many. Even animals exercise reason. I have seen a mother lion taking care of a baby antelope, and a mother elephant taking care of a baby lion. The primal need to eat is unavoidable, yet even under severe hunger stretches, the desire to love can sometimes overcome the desire to eat.

Questions are a child’s way of expressing love and trust. They are a child’s way of starting a conversation. So instead of simply insisting over and over again that the object of my son’s attention is, in fact, an elephant, I might tell him about how, in India, elephants are symbols of good luck, or about how some say elephants have the best memories of all the animals. I might tell him about the time I saw an elephant spin a basketball on the tip of his trunk, or about how once there was an elephant named Horton who heard a Who. I might tell him that once upon a time, there was an elephant and four blind men; each man felt a different part of the elephant’s body: the ears, the tail, the side, and the tusk . . . Sometimes, as I’m doing this, my son will crawl into my lap, put his head on my chest, and just listen to the story, his questions quieted, his body relaxed. And I realize this is all he wanted to begin with—to be near me, to hear the familiar cadence of my voice, to know he’s safe and not alone.

The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration “from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law.”3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilization is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality, and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day European Union, celebrating twenty-five hundred years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a halfhearted experiment that survived for barely two hundred years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilization for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilization? In truth, European civilization is anything Europeans make of it, just as Christianity is anything Christians make of it, Islam is anything Muslims make of it, and Judaism is anything Jews make out of it. And they have made of it remarkably different things over the centuries. Human groups are defined more by the changes they undergo than by any continuity, but they nevertheless manage to create for themselves ancient identities thanks to their storytelling skills. No matter what revolutions they experience, they can usually weave old and new into a single yarn.

Jolly Marchers by Maisie Aletha Smikle Dam Dam Didley Doe Dee Daw Didley Doe Dee Dam Doe Fa So La Ti Doe Animals in a row Prancing as they go Jiggling and Wiggling Tails and head bobbing Mice on drums Elephants on flute Zebras blare the trumpets Squirrels blow trombones Skunks get funky on clarinets Bees on violins Hogs on guitar Parrots and crickets sing Aha Aha Vultures cheer Mosquitoes twirl Wings clapping and flapping Heads go up and down bobbing Marching and skanking Rocking and bobbing Wiggling and singing Dee Daw Didley Doe This is not a circus There are no clowns There is not a palace There are no crowns On and on they go Monkeys in tow Tigers in bow Onlookers stare and glow Donkey takes the podium As conductor of the band Waving his marching wand The band comes to a stand Mule takes a stool And sits in the cool They have reached the bend Where the march ends The ants were nesting So they missed the fest Some got on tambourines And insist they must join in The ants jiggle and wiggle Some play the fiddle Dancing and singing Didley Dam Didley Doe

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration ‘from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which “have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law’.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a half-hearted experiment that survived for barely 200 years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilisation for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilisation?

[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of. Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property. ... A mafia state, in Magyar's definition, was different from other states ruled by one person surrounded by a small elite. In a mafia state, the small powerful group was structured just like a family. The center of the family is the patriarch, who does not govern: "he disposes--of positions, wealth, statuses, persons." The system works like a caricature of the Communist distribution economy. The patriarch and his family have only two goals: accumulating wealth and concentrating power. The family-like structure is strictly hierarchical, and membership in it can be obtained only through birth or adoption. In Putin's case, his inner circle consisted of men with whom he grew up in the streets and judo clubs of Leningrad, the next circle included men with whom he had worked with in the KGB/FSB, and the next circle was made up of men who had worked in the St. Petersburg administration with him. Very rarely, he 'adopted' someone into the family as he did with Kholmanskikh, the head of the assembly shop, who was elevated from obscurity to a sort of third-cousin-hood. One cannot leave the family voluntarily: one can only be kicked out, disowned and disinherited. Violence and ideology, the pillars of the totalitarian state, became, in the hands of the mafia state, mere instruments. The post-communist mafia state, in Magyar's words, is an "ideology-applying regime" (while a totalitarian regime is 'ideology-driven'). A crackdown required both force and ideology. While the instruments of force---the riot police, the interior troops, and even the street-washing machines---were within arm's reach, ready to be used, ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin's ideological repertoire had consisted of the word 'stability,' a lament for the loss of the Soviet empire, a steady but barely articulated restoration of the Soviet aesthetic and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, and general statements about the United States and NATO, which had cheated Russia and threatened it now. All these components had been employed during the 'preventative counter-revolution,' when the country, and especially its youth, was called upon to battle the American-inspired orange menace, which threatened stability. Putin employed the same set of images when he first responded to the protests in December. But Dugin was now arguing that this was not enough. At the end of December, Dugin published an article in which he predicted the fall of Putin if he continued to ignore the importance of ideas and history.

Skiddy Cottontail—that was his name—and he defended LGBT equality. He was a flamboyant, colorful striped rabbit, with a headdress of a rainbow crown on his forehead. The radiance of his energy was violet, scarlet, and turquoise; as it represented his love for everyone. In the infancy years of his existence, he was abandoned—alone—unwanted—unloved; rejected by a world that disdains him. His father wished him deceased, his family exiled him from the warren, he was physically mistreated and preyed on by homophobic mobs in the surrounding community by Elephants—Hyenas—rats. They splashed spit at his face, advising him that God condemns homosexuality—as Christ did not. They would slam him on the pavement with their Bibles, strike him in the stomach with their feet, throw boulders of stone at his body: imploring—abusing—condemning him to a tyrannical sentence. Skiddy Cottontail thought that his existence would end with this case of cruelty—violence—assault that was perpetrated against him. He wanted to cease to exist— he wanted to commit the ultimate murder on himself—he no more desired to go on living— he realized hope is already deceased. He yearned to have the courage to emerge, to discover his bravery that would sever this spiral of sensations of oppression. Being a victim made him a slave to his opponent—as his adversaries have full leverage against him. Life has become a thread of light, which he longed to be liberated from its shackles. His demon—a voice that keeps blaming him for his crimes in the back of his mind—a glass that continually cracks in his heart—will keep breaking him if he does not devise a way out of this crisis. He was conscious by his innermost conviction that there was candlelight with a key that had the potential to illuminate a new chapter that will erase this trail of obscurity behind him. He sees a new horizon with greater comprehension, a journey that can give him the roses of affection than a handful of dead birds that his adversaries handed him along the way. The stunning blossoming trees did have a forest—beautiful greenery that was colorful like the rainbow in the Heavens. This home will embrace him with a warm embrace of open arms, where cruelty is forbidden; where adoration can forever abound. Dawn will know him when he arrives. No more hurricanes or strife will be here—no crying of a sad humanity are here—only a gift of harmony and devotion, beyond all explanation, will abide in the heart of Skiddy Cottontail—when he finds his way out from this opponent world for a beautiful existence that is called liberation. Skiddy Cottontail has found a happiness that can only bring him contentment like nothing in this hurtful world can. Find your own sense of balance like him, Skiddy Cottontail, and you will experience serenity as much as him.

against

nightcap with Browne

If you want to live longer and to be strong, intelligent, loving, and kind--then don’t follow a tiger. Follow an elephant.

YOU DON'T NEED TO BE AN ELEPHANT BEFORE YOU ARE RELEVANT

LIMITATIONS: Don’t Believe in the Impossible A man was on vacation in Africa. One day, he watched an old African  man tying a giant elephant to a small wooden stake. The other side of the rope was tied to the front leg of the elephant.  To his great surprise, he noticed that the giant elephant waited patiently and did not attempt to move or run away, even though he was big enough to pull out the stake at  any moment. Later that day, he asked an elephant trainer how such a big elephant would not make an attempt to break free. The trainer explained, “When the elephants are very young, we use the same size rope to tie them to a small wooden stake. At their age, this stake is enough to hold them. As they grow up and get stronger, they never try to escape, as they continue to believe that that little stake will still hold them. The man was stunned. These would not try to break free because they believed it was impossible.

The war sometimes made men harder and softer at the same time.

this point, the uzis believed that even the nicest bulls

Sad Savages by Maisie Aletha Smikle Savages make selfish deals They claim what they steal Pay a penny for steel And feast at every meal The more they have The more they brag They slaughtered the hogs And took their sheltered sty Let the hogs live in the sky My oh my For indeed it is hog heaven We have plundered till the clock struck eleven Celebrate we must on the eleventh of the eleven Every year till half past seven For we have chased elephants from their habitat Where they once freely roam is now our home Savages fortify barricades and borders Wishing the world would stop turning and refrain from gathering Afraid that what goes around Will some day rotate back around to them Savages spy from the steeple Looking lurking and listening always suspecting For they have observed To expect what they served Never at ease are the savages Always jumpy anticipating the worst for others And the best for themselves Pointing always away from themselves

A chariot should be left at a distance of five hands, a horse should be left at a distance of ten hands, an elephant should be left at a distance of a thousand hands, and an evil person should be left only after he is banished from the country.

A goad controls an elephant, a slap of the hand controls a horse, a stick controls horned beasts, and a hand holding a sword controls an evil person.

One goes, if, into a cave of a lion, then he may get pearls obtained from the elephant’s head; but if he goes into a hole of a jackal, then all he may find is a tail of a calf or a piece of a donkey’s skin.

Even if a sandalwood is cut, it does not forsake its fragrance; even if an elephant grows old, it does not forsake its sportiveness; even if a sugarcane is squeezed in a mill, it does not forsake its sweetness; likewise, even if reduced to abject poverty, a man of noble lineage does not forsake his noble qualities.

Better to live under a tree in a forest full of tigers and elephants, eat fruits and drink spring water, lie on the grass and wear torn barks of trees, than to stay in the midst of relatives, living a life without wealth.

A goad controls an elephant’s vast body, is the goad as vast as the elephant? A lamp when lighted banishes darkness, is the lamp as vast as the darkness? Struck by a thunderbolt a mountain is split apart, is the thunderbolt as vast as the mountain? No, in brilliance is might seated, what is there in mere vastness?

Until the qualities of another person are known, one always devalues that another person; just like the wife of a hunter, not knowing the quality of a pearl obtained from the head of an elephant, throws it away in favour of a Gunja seed.

A jewel is not found in every mountain, a pearl is not found on the head of every elephant, good people are not found everywhere, sandalwood is not found in every forest.

elephants giggle in infrasound.

families that show love, respect and good attitude probably better than human beings’, and that the ‘wilderness is perhaps more civilised than what we call civilisation’. He concludes that lessons learnt from the elephants may ‘be the answer to mankind’.

From the tiny ant to the human or elephant, we are all Earthlings'' - Phoenix, Chapter 12, Earthlings - The Beginning

repent not if you are weak and small. don't forget that even the ant was weak and small when she had caused the elephant's downfall.

The Third Count: Dolphins don't like humans that much and never have. In fact, people who have been in the water with wild dolphins have been bumped, rammed, bitten, and, in one case, even killed by dolphins. The permanent smile on the faces of some species of dolphin is purely anatomical, no more indicative of the animal's state of mind than are the tusks on an elephant. You moron.

detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man’.

In the right light, an elephant’s lower eyelid takes on the colour of the ocean.

I

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

In reality the Spirit of Guidance may be pictured as one thread; and all the great masters of humanity are like the beads on that thread. One spirit and many individualities; one soul and many personalities; one wisdom and many teachers who have expounded wisdom according to their own personality. But at the same time, wisdom always being one, they cannot be compared with different scientists. For scientists, when they have discovered something new, say they have made a new discovery; but the prophets have never said that they had made a new discovery. They have always said, “What those who came before me perceived I perceive, and those who come after thousands of years will perceive the same.” Yet in spite of that it is always new, for every moment has its new joy. As Hafiz says, “Sing, my soul, a new song that every new moment inspires in you.” Once the soul awakens, it begins to see that truth is always new and renews the soul, giving it perpetual youth. When one finds differences between the teachers of humanity, these are only in the lives they lived. But no matter what their life was, whether they were kings or faqirs, whether they walked or rode on an elephant’s back, whether they were on a throne or in mountain caves or in deserts, they all had the same experience: realization. They might appear to be comfortable and rejoicing, but they heard the same note which others heard in tortures. Those who were kings such as Solomon and David, and those who were sages such as Krishna and Buddha, all these different souls had the same realization, the same philosophy. There could never be an argument if they were all to meet. But they are not meant to meet because they are all one. It was the Spirit of Guidance which manifested through all these different names and forms.

It was rather peculiar behaviour for a totem animal. Totem animals are supposed to be the spirits of actual dead animals or the essence of real animals. ... Actual elephants do not normally wear berets, sombreros or any other type of hat, nor do they dance upright shaking maracas.

My experience of ALL had made me realise that religions are both irrelevant and vitally important. Irrelevant to God, vitally important in making humans feel connected to God. It's not about any religion being the "right" one. It's about people finding ways to express their love of God to God.

I’m fine with waving my naked soul at people one-on-one, but flop badly with trust and hate change. Leaps of faith give me ulcers.

In reality, receiving psychic messages is a bit like having a pet talking parrot. When you’re alone, your parrot shouts, sings and talks all day, but the moment you invite your friends over to show off your amazing pet… dead silence.

Is faith merely (re)learning how to dance on water? Was the world created in seven days or seven notes?

…trust requires much more than affection; it depends on mutual confidence—strength, not niceness.

his life will achieve . . . something which is greater than happiness and unhappiness: and that is meaning’.

Dominance is not leadership. From animals, Williams said, people could learn about taking “authority without being a bully.

Unless a man already has it together, attempting to live more manfully by moving to Hollywood is no different than an elephant going to a graveyard to prevent itself from dying.

Women do not leave situations like this: we push up our sleeves, lean in closer, and say, "What do you need? Tell me what you need and by God I will do it." I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I've heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.

Only now do I understand how someone might never go back to a place so well loved but where so much heartache was endured.

We carry eternal optimism around in our wallets, along with our trillion-dollar notes. It's starting to feel like we're all lunatics living in an asylum.

Through a symphony of rumbles elephants greet, call, comfort, coordinate and converse. There are long soft rumbles, loud throaty rumbles, slow deep rumbles, low purring rumbles, short gurgling rumbles - and these are just the ones that are audible to my ears.

Friends who witness these encounters suspect that Lady, wild and free, has bestowed on me the status of 'honorary elephant'. I am moved beyond words.

an ancient 4x4, a pair of binoculars, a camera, a tyre compressor pump, jumper leads and a can opener are my most treasured possessions.

These days I'm always relieved to see broken tusks, making these elephants less attractive to the sport-hunters and poachers.

The government loves to exaggerate things like birth rates, population growth and some vegetation impacts. Figures are blindly repeated until they become 'fact'.... I will soon know first-hand exactly how frequently Hwange elephants are giving birth, and from what age, to then be able to dispel some of the myths.

elephants are to me the essence of wild freedom. I am adamant that they do not deserve such agony and disturbance at the hands of humans.

These memorable displays are made even more special for me because I know who the elephants are, and am able to interpret their interactions with one another. I don't know for sure why they meet up like this, but I like to think they're simply having a party, by infrasonic invitation only; celebrating their close bonds, and catching up on gossip after long periods apart.

I feel an unspeakable despair. I close my eyes and weep in grief and frustration at what is going on around me.

I'd discovered powers of resilience that I didn't know I had.

Words from Karen Blixen's book, Out of Africa, subsequently play over and over in my mind: 'If I know a song of Africa ... does Africa know a song of me?... would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? Will Hwange's bateleur eagles keep looking out for me?

Things will never change unless we properly expose these bullies. I'm no use to the elephants as a martyr but I can't lie low out of fear.