treasure

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
~ John Muir ~

light is

"Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light."
~ Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider ~

honored

"Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored."
~ Daniel Webster ~

wild animal

"Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it."
~ J. Paul Getty ~

universe

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."
~ John Muir ~

mysterious

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
~ Henry Miller ~

expression

"The expression "to write something down" suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it."
~ William Gass ~

wild ones

"None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones."
~ Forbes Watson ~

sit awhile

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."
~ Lorraine Hansberry ~

luscious

“I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.”
~ Walt Whitman ~

intellectual life

"Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances."
~ George Eliot ~

alive

"If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive."
~ Eleonora Duse ~

a book

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page."
~ St. Augustine ~

horse

"Horse thou art truly a creature
without equal, for thou fliest
without wings and conquerest
without sword."
~ The Koran ~

shadow

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

storm crossing

"Sky half cloudy. Great warm, soothing, magnificent mist-sheets are upon the mountains this morning, bathing the tree buds and myriads of quickening seeds with a gentleness of gesture and touch that has no word symbol on earth. How indescribable in texture they are, and how finely do they conform to the sloping and waving topography of the hill-bands!"
~ John Muir ~

character

"Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

colonnades

"No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets."
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

forgotten

"So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us."
~ Gaston Bachelard ~

light

"How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!"
~ Emily Dickinson ~

like the dandelion

"No creature is fully itself till it is, like the dandelion, opened in the bloom of pure relationship to the sun, the entire living cosmos."
~ DH Lawrence ~

living

"Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong."
~ Maya Angelou ~

morning star

"The sun is but a morning star."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

interpretation

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

patience

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

simply look

"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: 'Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?'"
~ Ansel Adams ~

roads which move

"Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go."
~ Blaise Pascal ~