The deepest root finds the purest water.
From The Soul Without the Story, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The big oak at the corner of the lot went brown in August while the maples by the ditch stayed green, and I had it backwards for most of my life: I assumed the thirsty-looking one was the one failing. Switch told me the oak was fine, that it had simply quit the leaves it could not afford and was drinking from somewhere none of us could see. The ditch maples get their water handed to them and they taste whatever ran off the road to get there. The deepest root finds the purest water, I wrote, and then sat a while because I did not much like what it says about the time it takes. Thirty years that oak was going down before it had anything to show above the fence line. I have never once seen a root.
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
- The wind moves the trees, but what moves the wind?
- No amount of building bridges out will spare you the work of building a bridge in.
- When you know you are going home, you look for a road that leads home.
- Nothing is invisible until someone looks and does not see.
- We do not stand on the surface of the earth, but on roots that go much deeper.
- No one receives the honor of breathing this air who has not prepared to move a mountain.