Quotes about respect

A harvest is made honorable when it sustains the giver as well as the taker.

If you ask permission, you have to listen to the answer.

The guidelines of the Honorable Harvest are not usually written down, they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if I were to list them they would look something like this:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for a life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first one. Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.:

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the Earth will last forever.

“You see,” she says slowly, “I was always desired. But now I am valued. And that is a different thing, I find.”

After this incident I got into the bad habit of treating her with courtesy and respect. Courtesy and respect are advisable when addressing a judge right before he sentences you, but in a relationship they signify discomfort.

You children, you forget that no matter how high the okra tree grows, it's never mightier than the hand that planted it.

You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them.

“Your father,” I said. “What does he really want?”

“What any father wants,” said Oxley. “The respect of his children.”

I nearly said that not all fathers were worthy of respect, but I managed to keep my gob shut and anyway not everyone had a dad like mine.

Now I know exactly how dangerous the forest can be. And I hope I never forget it. Just like Crow said, the world's filled with things I don't know about. All the plants and trees there, for instance. I'd never imagined that trees could be so weird and unearthly. I mean, the only plants I've ever really seen or touched till now are the city kind -neatly trimmed and cared-for bushes and trees. But the ones here -the ones living here -are totally different. They have a physical power, their breath grazing any humans who might chance by, their gaze zeroing in on the intruder like they've spotted their prey. Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me-or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea.

Often all we need to be civil with one another is the presence of a referee we don’t want thinking us fools.

“Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head—I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have by you, Woolwich!”

Now you think about this, too: you’re not charming, dashing, or debonair. You’re funny looking, as a matter of fact. You’re too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you’d be so out of place that I couldn’t enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won’t be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don’t feel that you’ve scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don’t try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?