Quotes About Roots

We must not lose touch with what we were, with what we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition can also be an anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty decision.

I was raised up where folks looked to the hills, only up where we came from you hadn't chance to look much higher, we were that near the top of the ridge.

We sprung from thin soil, and raised more kin than crops, but we were proud folk...

Home is where we're going now

that was where he came from

a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition

Rockefeller remained a country boy at heart

Rachel kneeled beside Jacob. She took the child's hand and pressed it to the dirt. Her father had told Rachel that Harmons had been on this land since before the Revolutionary War. Don't ever forget what it feels like, Jacob, she whispered, and let her hand touch the ground as well.

kin, not ancestors. Our main difference from

Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.

Who goes to the hills, goes to his mother.

Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants.

Love is the earth that holds our roots in place. Without it, there's nothing to keep us from falling over.

Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.

We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.

Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.

It did not occur to any of them that their decision was born of a colossal sense of entitlement, this notion that they could just step away from yesterday and start tomorrow as if it wasn't a part of the same week, to move beyond memory and roots and language and race into the land of the self-made self, which is another way of saying, America.

he wished he could have roots spreading under every inch of his lost soil, his beloved lost home, that he could have been part of something, that he could have been himself, walking down the road not taken, living a life in context and not the migrant's hollow journey that had been his fate

I am comparing gravity with belonging... Both phenomena observably exist... but neither is understood...We know the force of gravity but not its origins; and to explain how we become attached to our birth places we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places. -- from Home and Shame

We are creatures of air, Our roots in dreams And clouds, reborn In flight.

Solid ground beneath his feet, dirt under his fingernails, the husbandry of growing things, bulbs and roots, seeds and shoots, this had been his world.

Somos criaturas del aire, / con raíces en los sueños / y las nubes renacidas / en el vuelo.

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.