glorious ladder

"When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling."
~ Lord Byron ~

points

"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."
~ Noelie Altito ~

substance

“In some photographs the essence of light and space dominate; in others, the substance of rock and wood, and the luminous insistence of growing things.”
~ Ansel Adams ~

darkness

“The wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the sun went down carrying glad day elsewhere; and a train of dull clouds coming up against it, menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the void they left behind and spread over all the sky. Then was heard the low rumbling of distant thunder, then the lightning quivered, and then the darkness of an hour seemed to have gathered in an instant."
~ Charles Dickens ~

arch

"Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
~ Kublai Khan ~

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 ~

invisible current

"The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current."
~ Willa Cather ~

tiny glitters

"...we might as well face the truth that to researchers of the future, poking about among the ruins of time, we shall all be tiny glitters."
~ James Thurber ~

shared dreams

"We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life."
~ David Amram ~

desert sky

"Being in the desert was brilliant and it was hard."
~ Toni Collette ~

pluck

"All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind."
~ Abraham Lincoln ~

dawn in the canyon

"Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.
~ Emily Dickinson ~

born

". . . Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!"
~ John Galsworthy ~

all too short

"Summer's lease hath all to short a date."
~ William Shakespeare ~

endless effort

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

deep twilight

"They turn'd to rest; and, each clasp'd by an arm,
Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm."
~ Lord Byron ~

bloom

"When bright flowers bloom
Parchment crumbles, my words fade
The pen has dropped..."
~ Morpheus ~

oblique

“All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it - an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.”
~ Peter Conrad ~

widespread garden

"The order of things should be somewhat reversed; the seventh day should be man's day of toil and the other six his sabbath of the affections and the soul--in which to range this widespread garden and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of nature."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

illusion

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures."
~ Oscar Wilde ~

without hope

"Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow."
~ Antonio Porchia ~

endless variety

"As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers her brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing."
~ John Muir ~

o

"O to be self balanced for contingencies!
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule,
accidents, rebuffs as trees and animals do! "
~ Walt Whitman ~

maenad

"And the wand-like lily which lifted up, As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

discovery

"The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
~ Marcel Proust ~

love waits

"It is at the edge of a petal that love waits."
~ William Carlos Williams ~

help

"Help your brother's boat across, and your own will reach the shore.
~ Hindu Proverb ~

feel

"Tell me you feel this fire."
~ Douglas Coupland ~

sieze

"Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations."
~ Jane Austen ~

precious blessings

"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"
~ Thomas Jefferson ~

fire in the sky

"...like a fire in the sky..."
~ Yngwie Malmsteen ~

daisy-time

“And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it's always daisy-time.”
~ D.H. Lawrence ~

solace

"Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity."
~ John Ruskin ~

unnatural stillness

"A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm."
~ Charles Dickens ~

risk

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
~ Anaïs Nin ~

wobbly

"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."
~ A. A. Milne ~

loveliness

"Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise."
~ George Washington Carver ~

institution

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

the edges

"I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don't find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges."
~ William Albert Allard ~

water

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."
~ Emily Bronte ~

music

"There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it."
~ Minnie Aumonier ~

unity

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life."
~ John Muir ~

a flower

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
~ Albert Camus ~

rejoicing

"In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."
~ John Milton ~

birthday

"The United States is the only country with a known birthday."
~ James G. Blaine ~

what they seem

"Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets."
~ Baltasar Gracian ~

lay waste

"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

time

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
~ Douglas Adams ~

trap

"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."
~ Henri Cartier-Bresson ~

exposed

"The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~