Teaching Elders

Famous quotes containing the words teaching and/or elders:

    Give me the splendid silent sun
    with all his beams full-dazzling,
    Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
    Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
    Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
    Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.
    Kent Nerburn (20th century)