A butterfly does not elude a pursuing bird by speed or by cunning, but by making smaller moves more often.
From The Beginning Viewed from the End, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A cabbage white came up off the clover by the fence this afternoon and I went after it, which I will admit I did not need to do. I have taken dragonflies out of the air. This thing flew like a scrap of paper in a draft and I missed it four times, close enough twice to feel the air it moved. For years I thought a butterfly survived by being bitter or being lucky; a butterfly does not elude a pursuing bird by speed or by cunning, but by making smaller moves more often. There is no line to follow because it never commits to one long enough to be a line. Switch watched the whole business from the low branch and said nothing, which from him is a verdict.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Why lengthen your stride when you can shorten the road?
- If you’re willing to take a long enough road, you can get anywhere.
- The first time a bird hops out of its nest, it trades everything known for a chance to get closer to the sun.
- That we forget our reason for being here does not mean we don’t have one.
- Some make little of much and others make much of little.
- Life gives us more gifts in a day than we unwrap in a year.