When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I had a rat-tail when I was younger. I had this nice Bobby Brown fade, with a rat-tail that was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

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

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

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.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.

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

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

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

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

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

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

I am two with nature.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

God never meant that people were to wear clothes. He meant we were to be nude. But we were in a state of innocence. Then sin came into the human race and became a blood poisoning.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Never find fault with the absent.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.