> If these trees were suddenly to start walking, they would destroy everything in their path. But they choose to remain where they are: they do not have blood or nerves, only sap, and instead of rage or fear, a silent tenacity possesses them. Animals flee or attack; trees stay firmly planted where they are. Patience: the heroism of plants. Being neither a lion nor a serpent: being a holm-oak, a piru-tree. > – Octavio Paz, The Monkey Grammarian >He rides too much in the express trains of thought, in the luxury trains of modern, fast, dizzy thinking, from one end of philosophy to the other. If he had only insisted more (I wish inwardly) on walking, walking barefoot where possible, taking in every little stone, the edge of every grass-blade, and now and then stooping over some modest find: because then I would have met him, while like this he always drives past me, impatient, restless as he is ... >Rilke, in a letter to Gudrun Baroness Uexküll, Feb 24, 1907 (on reading a book by Walter Calé)