“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”--John Muir

And even the sun in dawn chorus sings,a celestial melody to the earth
below.-Tjaden

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. ~John Buchanan

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~George Washington Carver

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. ~William Wordsworth

The most beautiful view is the one I share with you.

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”--John Muir

Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you'll find it there. ~Robb Sagendorph

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~Author Unknown

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to min,
His furniture is love.--Emily Dickinson

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
--John Muir

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
--From, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.--Denise Levertov

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.--Linda Hogan

As the sun rose up over the houses in the neighborhood today, I heard the soft cooing of a mouring dove high up in our old elm tree. He knew.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do. ~Michel de Montaigne

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. ~Victor Hugo

Wildfires in Texas, although serious and tragic, produce a lot of smoke that
add to the brilliance of a sunset.

March 12, 2006

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you'll find it there. ~Robb Sagendorph

The morning sunrise created some interesting color on a partially frozen pond.

The laws of nature are written deep in the folds and faults of the earth. By encouraging men to learn those laws one can lead them further to a knowledge of the author of all laws.
John Joseph Lynch

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
--John Muir

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
--Frank Lloyd Wright

Just simply beautiful. The sounds of the meadowlarks were like a symphony.

Come forth into the light of things:
let Nature be your teacher.
William Wordsworth

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive
and even spiritual satisfaction.
- Edward O. Wilson

The golden sun has gone, the busy day is done.
Twilight has come and with it peace draws near
To dwell an hour within my garden walls, while in
The lambent sky the first pale stars appear.
The wheeling shadows that so slowly marked the hours
-MARIE NETTLETON CARROLL

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou, who changest not, abide with me.
- Henry Francis Lyte, 1793 - 1847

Trees are the earth's endless
effort to speak to the listening heaven.
Rabindranath Tagore

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked
off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue,
others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed
all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and
the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke
them, as one would the sleek back of a cat.
- Mark Twain

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.--Anne Frank

I go to nature to be soothed and healed,
and to have my senses put in order.
--John Burroughs

"Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
time is eternity"
~Henry Van Dyke

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
- Rumi

God painted the earth and sky
But I think he used Texas as
his palate.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the word
--Eleanor Farjean

Blue and vivid orange sky by God.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
William Shakespeare

Feelings are everywhere -- be gentle.

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins
to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value.
To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.
- Albert Schweitzer

There are places and moments in which one is so
completely alone that one sees the world entire.
-Jules Renard

The beginning of wisdom is silence.
The second step is listening.
-- Unknown

The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success,
his influence, his power for good.
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.
-James Allen

When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea.
- Baron E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, 1803 - 1873

Life can only be understood backwards,
but it must be lived forwards.
--Soren Kierkegaard

Our waking hours form the text of our lives,
our dreams, the commentary.
--Anonymous

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but
unto all them also that love his appearing.
--II Timothy (ch. IV, v. 7)

The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.
Marcus Aurelius

The Earth will be o'er watched tonight
By the old man in the moon
He peeks through the trees
At all he sees
As he whispers Claire de Lune
-from "Eventide", S.Sparks

"Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination if I never try,
so I will sail my vessle 'til the river runs dry."
~Garth Brooks

He lay me down besides the still waters
He restoreth my soul.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
--Albert Einstein

"The best and most beautiful things
in the world cannot be touched.
They must be felt with the heart"
~Helen Keller

Philosophy considers questions that may never be answered.
Religion has answers that need not be questioned.
- Author Unknown

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.
--Anne Frank

It's Eventide!
And soon the moon will shine o'er all
As the colors turn to gray
The sparkling stars will glitter high
Until the dawn brings forth the day
--from "Eventide", S.Sparks

Wind is the loving
Wooer of waters;
Wind blends together
Billows all-foaming.

Spirit of man,
Thou art like unto water!
Fortune of man,
Thou art like unto wind!
- Goethe, 1789

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His Heaven;
All's right with the world!
- Robert Browning

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime.
But all these times and places and occasions are now
and here. God himself culminates in the present
moment, and will never be more divine in the
lapse of all the ages.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Oft did I wonder why the setting sun
Should look upon us with a blushing face:
Is't not for shame of what he hath seen done,
Whilst in our hemisphere he ran his race?
- Lyman Heath, First Century--On the Setting Sun

The stillness of the early morning scene enables me to take in and enjoy many
things which pass me by during the bustle of the day. First, there are the scents,
which seem even more generous with their offerings than they are in the evening.
- Rosemary Verey

Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
Eric Hoffer

See! led by Morn, with dewy feet,
Apollo mounts his golden seat,
Replete with seven-fold fire;
While, dazzled by his conquering light,
Heaven's glittering host and awful night
Submissively retire.
- Thomas Taylor ("The Platonist"),
Ode to the Rising Sun

O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen.
- Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring

March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy.
- Emily Dickinson, XLVIII

Colours change: in the morning light, red shines out bright and clear and the blues merge into
their surroundings, melting into the greens; but by the evening the reds loose their piquancy,
embracing a quieter tone and shifting toward the blues in the rainbow. Yellow flowers remain
bright, and white ones become luminous, shining like ghostly figures against a
darkening green background.
- Rosemary Verey, The Scented Garden, 1981

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through
which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
- George Washington Carver

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
--from "Fiddler On The Roof"

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty,
and never see the Dawn!
- Logan Pearsall Smith

Awake, thou wintry earth--
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
Christ is risen.
- Thomas Blackburn, An Easter Hymn

Day by day
Day by day
Oh Dear Lord
Three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly
Day by day
--from "Godspell"

It's Eventide!
The sun is slowly gliding down
The west side of the world
And softly over to the East,
The darkness has unfurled
The robins roost in the willows
Gently swaying in the breeze
The old owl hoots from a lonely branch
In a grove of budding trees.

--Shelley D. Sparks

As the old saying goes: "Red sky at morning--sailors take warning."

The grand show is eternal.
It is always sunrise somewhere;
the dew is never dried all at once;
a shower is forever falling;
vapor is ever rising.
Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming,
on sea and continents and islands,
each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
--John Muir

Delight becomes pictorial

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,--
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountaln at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,--
And that's the skies!


--Emily Dickinson

Unedited.

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.
- Alan Havhamess

"Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron), Don Juan
(canto IV, st. 110)

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

--Emily Dickinson

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8