Barbara > Barbara's Quotes

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.”
― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― wendell berry

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”
― Wendell Berry

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”
― Wendell Berry

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
― Mark Twain

“Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.”
― Mark Twain

“The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground.”
― Christina Rosetti

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”
― e. e. cummings

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
― Walt Whitman

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“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, Auguries of Innocence

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.”
― Terry Tempest Williams

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.”
― George Washington Carver, George Washington Carver in his own words

“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
― Albert Einstein

“In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.”
― Alice Walker

“People often say that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where other have not dared to look including inside ourselves.”
― Salma Hayek

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”
― Abraham Lincoln