quiet life

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."
~ Albert Einstein ~

weathered

"I have weathered the storm,
I have beaten out my exile."
~ Ezra Pound ~

harmony

“There is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

companionable

“I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

paradise

“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see."
~ Edward Abbey ~

our fill

"Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short,
but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit,
and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day."
~ John Donne ~

if only

"If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!"
~ Antonio Porchia ~

echo

"Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
~T.S. Eliot ~

adorned

"By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned!
~ Alexander Pope ~

high promise

“Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.”
~ Horace ~

crazed

“Bring me then the plant that points to those bright Lucidites swirling up from the earth, And life itself exhaling that central breath! Bring me the sunflower crazed with the love of light.”
~ Eugenio Montale ~

beautiful

"How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!"
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

sweet simple things

“It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder ~

dialogues

“The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.”
~ Auguste Rodin ~

fragments of things

"I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could."
~ Georgia O'Keeffe ~

madhouse

“Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

violet-scented

“It was a still afternoon--the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath."
~ George Eliot ~

subtle something

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit."
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

why not

“Some men see things as they are and say why... I dream of things that never were and say why not."
~ George Bernard Shaw ~

the peace of wild things

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
~ Wendell Berry ~