Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

One of the things I love most about being at home is that I’m comfortable there. And since we are the home of Christ, we need to make sure He’s comfortable in us.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Faith crosses every border and touches every heart in every nation.

Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.

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

‚O sleep, O gentle sleep,‘ I thought gratefully, ‚Nature’s soft nurse!‘

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

In the book of Gaga, fame is in your heart, fame is there to comfort you, to bring you self-confidence and worth whenever you need it.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

For greed all nature is too little.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.