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Lyall Watson Quotes

If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.

If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.

Lyall Watson
Elephants, Common Sense, Challenges
Lyall Watson (2003). “Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant”, p.38, W. W. Norton & Company

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

Lyall Watson
Inspirational, Inspiring, Wise

Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos.

Lyall Watson
Artist, Expression, Space

Both dance and dream are brought into being by the consciousness of a moment. They can never be repeated or successfully imitated. But you can dance and dream again. You must, if life is to continue.

Lyall Watson
Dream, Consciousness, Life Is

It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right.

Lyall Watson
Rain, Rivers, Water
Lyall Watson (1987). “The dreams of dragons: riddles of natural history”, William Morrow & Co

Genes which allow females to be less inhibited leave fewer copies of themselves than genes which persuade them to remain highly selective. Among males, the best strategy is exactly the opposite one. The maximum advantage goes to those males with the fewest inhibitions. "Love 'em and leave 'em" is not so much a nasty peice of male chauvinist piggery as an accurate reflection of biological reality.

Lyall Watson
Reflection, Reality, Opposites

We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility. ... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.

Lyall Watson
Silence, Trying, Succeed

If you simply walk on the beach as we are doing, you have no special color. But if you travel with a purpose, it is different. When you go somewhere important or you return home from a long journey, you build a shape around you and it reaches out ahead to touch your destination.

Lyall Watson
Beach, Home, Journey

Before sight and sound hijacked our attention, we shared with all life a sort of common sense, a chemical sense that depended on direct contact with matter in the water or the air.

Lyall Watson
Sight, Air, Water
Lyall Watson (2000). “Jacobson's Organ: And the Remarkable Nature of Smell”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on my memory and making a point of letting #‎ intuition guide my way.

Lyall Watson
Memories, Light, Intuition
"Lyall Watson" by Dennis Barker, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2008.

The limits of sensory evolution in fish are defined very largely by their habitat. Water is physically supportive, carries some kinds of odour well, and is kind to sound - letting it travel several times faster than air will allow, but it inhibits other more personal kinds of communication.

Lyall Watson
Communication, Air, Water
"Jacobson's Organ and The Remarkable Nature Of Smell" by Lyall Watson, www.nytimes.com. 2000.

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