In the fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.
Quotes about Naming
A way that can be named
is not the way. Each word reflects
the Spirit which can't be named. Each word
a gift, its value in exact proportion
to the spirit in which it is given.
Thus spoken, these words I give
by way of Lao Tzu's old Chinese, stolen
by a humbe thief twenty-five centuries later.
May you eat an unfamiliar dessert in a strange land at least once every three years.
May you wake up... and start dancing while you're still half-asleep.
May you spray-paint Rilke poems as graffiti on highway overpasses...
My you learn to identify by name 20 flowers, 15 trees, 10 clouds, and one extrasolar planet...
May you dream of taking a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans.
'What's the use of their having names the Gnat said, 'if they won't answer to them?'
'No use to them,' said Alice; 'but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?'
'I can't say,' the Gnat replied.
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

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