All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Nature abhors annihilation.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Philosophy is the highest music.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

I am rather inclined to silence.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.