Barb Edwards

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of the carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect. Respect--that's the word. One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns. I have known these great ones since my earliest childhood, have lived among them, camped and slept against their warm monster bodies, and no amount of association has bred contempt in me.”
― John Steinbeck

“Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.”
― Jim Butcher, Changes

“Is our Heaven your God, and is your God our Heaven?' she inquired.
'They are one and the same,' he replied...
'There is only one true God. He has many names.'
'Then anywhere upon the round earth, by whatever seas, those who believe in any God believe in the One?' she asked.
'And so are brothers,' he said, agreeing.
'And if I do not believe in any?' she inquired willfully.
'God is patient,' he said. 'God waits. Is there not eternity?”
― Pearl S. Buck, Pavilion of Women

“to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Pavilion of Women