In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

For greed all nature is too little.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

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

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots.

I’m crepuscular.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Water is my drink.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Think of our physical sustenance. It is truly heaven-sent. The necessities of air, food, and water all come to us as gifts from a loving Heavenly Father.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.