You are more likely to find the truth looking for a flower than to find a flower looking for the truth.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A woman came through the park this morning with a magnifying glass and a paper guide to the asters, and she spent eleven minutes on her knees by the fence looking at one purple thing. She never once looked up. By the time she stood, she had worked out something about the way the petals were counted, and she said it out loud to nobody, and it was true. I spent years thinking the big questions wanted to be asked directly, head on, the way you fly at a window you have not yet learned is there. You are more likely to find the truth looking for a flower than to find a flower looking for the truth. Switch says this is just an argument for having a hobby, and I am not sure he is wrong, but the woman was not having a hobby, she was counting petals.
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
- Life is the history lesson you get to experience firsthand.
- The problem with being intelligent is that you have all that intelligence to use against yourself.
- Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation.
- The old road has lots of twists and turns but few surprises.
- Better to stumble on the right path than stride forward on the wrong one.
- No matter where you look for it, the sun only rises in the east.