A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis. A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
It's no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way . Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams... God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden... The best gift of the desert is God's presence... The protective love of the Shepherd gives me courage to face the interior journey. Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Walt Whitman, in his preface to Leaves of Grass: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Sonnets From the Portuguese,I I thought once how Theocritus had sung
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--
Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there,
The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.
There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. The rustling of a wild-bird's wings, I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.
Elizabeth Lawrence
John Betjeman
A star, a flower, a gush of rain,
The sight of sad or joyous things,
Oft makes me seem a child again:
With voiceless eloquence they come,
Bright phantoms of my childhood's home.
ROSA VERTNER JEFFREY, "My Childhood's Home"
Williston Fish, "A Last Will"
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future . Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined. Once war becomes a clash of absolutes, there is no breathing room for mercy. Absolute truth is blind truth. If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will grow stronger and return. If you contemplate the Golden Rule, it turns out to be an injunction to live by grace rather than by what you think other people deserve. Each of us is here to discover our true Self... that essentially we are spiritual beings who have taken manifestation in physical form... that we're not human beings that have occasional spiritual experiences that we're spiritual beings that have occasional human experiences. Never forget that you are not in the world; the world is in you. When anything happens to you, take the experience inward. Creation is set up to bring you constant hints and clues about your role as co-creator. Your soul is metabolizing experience as surely as your body is metabolizing food. Be content not with your lot in life but with being here in the flow of life. The glories of creation are in your very cells; you are made of the same mindstuff as the angels, the stars, and god himself.
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life.
