Gretel Ehrlich Quotes

Quotes about:

Animals Birds History Nature Water

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

Gretel Ehrlich

Nature, Invites

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

51 Copy quote
I like to think of the landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its mulitplicity and endless variety, come in.

Gretel Ehrlich

Mean, Eye, Thinking

23 Copy quote
Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly.

Gretel Ehrlich

Love Life, Animal, Land

Gretel Ehrlich (2010). “The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold”, p.197, Vintage

32 Copy quote
Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Gretel Ehrlich

Honesty, Humble, Medicine

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

Gretel Ehrlich

Rivers, Dangerous, Careless

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

20 Copy quote
True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere.

Gretel Ehrlich

Solace, Findings

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

Gretel Ehrlich

Tough, Fierce, Fragile

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

20 Copy quote
A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

Gretel Ehrlich

Animal, Light, Wind

Gretel Ehrlich (2017). “Islands, the Universe, Home: Essays”, p.84, Open Road Media

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I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

Gretel Ehrlich

Thinking, Rooms, Landscape

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Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Gretel Ehrlich

Verbs, Seasons

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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To trace the history of a river or a raindrop is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again.

Gretel Ehrlich

Spring, Fall, Rivers

51 Copy quote
Survival is as much a matter of grace as fight. The expression, 'grace under pressure' implies the attainment of equanimity and equilibrium. The fundamental durability of the human body surprises us because the pain can be so intense - yet pain is often transient and hides the tremendous effforts the body is engaged in to heal itself.

Gretel Ehrlich

Pain, Fighting, Expression

Gretel Ehrlich (1995). “A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning”, p.86, Penguin

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Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

Gretel Ehrlich

Loss, Appetite For Life, Despair

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.

Gretel Ehrlich

Sadness, Autumn, Meaning Something

Gretel Ehrlich (1985). “The solace of open spaces”, Viking Pr

13 Copy quote
If anything is endemic to Wyoming it is wind. This big room of space is swept out daily, leaving a bone yard of fossils, agates, and carcasses in every stage of decay. Though it was water that initially shaped the state, wind is the meticulous gardener, raising dust and pruning the sage.

Gretel Ehrlich

Dust, Wind, Wyoming

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

13 Copy quote
Walking is also an ambulation of mind.

Gretel Ehrlich

Journey, Hiking, Mind

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To long for love, to have experienced passion's deep pleasure, even once, is to understand the mercilessness of having a human body whose memory rides desire's back unanchored from season to season.

Gretel Ehrlich

Memories, Passion, Long

Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

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How odd it is that sewing is thought to be 'women's work' when surgeons, sailors, and cowboys sew too. Yet how many female thoracic surgeons are there? And if precision motor activities are thought to be performed better by women, why wouldn't they make better surgeons too?

Gretel Ehrlich

Cowboy, Female, Sailor

Gretel Ehrlich (1995). “A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning”, p.110, Penguin

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To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

Gretel Ehrlich

Song, Nature, Orchids

Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

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We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still. Lovers, farmers, and artists have one thing in common, at least - a fear of 'dry spells,' dormant periods in which we do no blooming, internal droughts only the waters of imagination and psychic release can civilize.

Gretel Ehrlich

Artist, Rivers, Psychics

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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It's no wonder human beings are so narcissistic. The way our ears are constructed, we can hear only what is right next to us or else the internal monologue inside.

Gretel Ehrlich

Narcissistic, Ears, Way

Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

9 Copy quote
Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Gretel Ehrlich

Autumn, Long, Water

Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

7 Copy quote
There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

Gretel Ehrlich

Curves, Long, Racism

Gretel Ehrlich (2017). “Heart Mountain: A Novel”, p.38, Open Road Media

59 Copy quote
To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

Gretel Ehrlich

Rain, Rivers, Water

Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

42 Copy quote
Fog rolled in like a form of sorrow. To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma. ... The sea was a memory bank into which everything fell and was lost. I dove in but came out empty-handed.

Gretel Ehrlich

Memories, Ocean, Fog

Gretel Ehrlich (1995). “A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning”, p.51, Penguin

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Born: January 21, 1946
Occupation: Writer
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