Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'Keefe
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
John Muir
To the dull mind nature is leaden.
To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Elliot
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?
Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Rene Daumal
The greatest wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from a conversation with John Muir
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth.
THICH NHAT HAHN from “The Miracle of Mindfulness
Color is a power which directly influences the soul.
Wassily Kandinsky
Everything is flowing -- going somewhere, animals and so- called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks... While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature's warm heart.
John Muir
As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.
John Muir
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley ("Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature")
The only source of knowledge is experience.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the foundation of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is inconceivable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom, as the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive form - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
Albert Einstein
All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
Albert Einstein
A bit beyond perception's reach, I sometimes believe I see, that Life is two locked boxes, each containing the other's key.
Piet Hein
The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.
Albert Einstein
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
Albert Einstein ("Evolution of Physics")
The presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing and had truly tasted how knowledge is earned would recognize that infinity of other truths of which he understands nothing.
Galileo Galilei
The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.
Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned.
Loren Eiseley ("The Firmament of Time")
As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.
Isaac Newton
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
Max Planck
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decisions, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A thing of BEAUTY is a JOY forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep. A bower for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.
Helen Keller
