Another obscure memory

[donheff]

The thread on sleeve gators reminded me how much combined knowledge is available on this forum. I have an obscure memory I have not been able to track down with Google searches. Every few years it pesters me and I search anew but no luck. My memory is of poetic quote of a "traditional saying" from some African tribe that perfectly caught the effect of paranoia. I vaguely remember reading it in the pre-Internet 80s, probably in a novel - if the author made it up that may be why I can't find the quote online.

The quote was something along the lines of this but much catchier:

He who believes there is a tiger in the tall grass
hears his stealthy footfall in each rustle of the leaves.
sees his furtive creeping in each movement of the blades
​

Anyone familiar with this "saying?"

 

[MissMolly]

Is it this?

Peter Watts > Quotes > Quotable Quote

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there weren`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

 

[donheff]

Is it this?

Peter Watts > Quotes > Quotable Quote

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there weren`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

That captures the meaning of the phrase I remember but is not the quote I am looking for. What I read was about four lines of poetry or prose similar in structure to the paraphrase I wrote.

 

[target2019]

Told in the Verandah: Passages in the Life Of Colonel Bowlong, Set Down by His Adjutant

"Stealthy footfall" might be the key phrase. It doesn't fit what you are looking for exactly, I'll admit.

https://books.google.com/books?id=c...=2ahUKEwi2276_t4L5AhUAlIkEHcdXCVkQ6AF6BAgCEAM

 

[donheff]

Told in the Verandah: Passages in the Life Of Colonel Bowlong, Set Down by His Adjutant

"Stealthy footfall" might be the key phrase. It doesn't fit what you are looking for exactly, I'll admit.

https://books.google.com/books?id=c...=2ahUKEwi2276_t4L5AhUAlIkEHcdXCVkQ6AF6BAgCEAM

I think my choice of words are similar to what I read back in the day but not the actual words. That may be why I can't get a hit on it. Or, the quote may be buried in a book somewhere that is not reached by a Google search. If I could run parts of my quote through all books using Google Book Search maybe I could get it. But as I understand book search you have to first select the book to search and I don't have a clue.

 

[ERD50]

"You may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean they are *not* out to get you!".

Probably not the style you were thinking of, but I recall that one (George Carlin maybe?), and it does fit the sentiment.

edit/add: found it Catch-22

https://hansondoremus.com/just-beca...-they-arent-after-you-joseph-heller-catch-22/

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

Here's another - sounds poetic like your thoughts, doesn't quite fit the sentiment, but sometimes our minds play tricks on us, and we warp a memory into something else over the years:

“Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure.”

― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

 

[donheff]

I think I am asking the impossible. Someone would have to have read the same book and remember the quote - not very likely.

I probably should have asked for creative rewrites of my faulty memory. The quote I vaguely remember was a lot like I posted, just better - The first line may have used "tall grass," or maybe just "grass." That was followed by two lines, one evoked sound (wind rustling the leaves or something) and the other visual motion (movement of the blades or something).