Gina

“Strangers talked freely to one another without caution. I had forgotten how rich and beautiful is the countryside--the deep topsoil, the wealth of great trees, the lake country of Michigan handsome as a well-made woman, and dressed and jeweled. It seemed to me that the earth is generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“The longer we remain isolated in a period of liberty, the harder it will be to find one another in a time of persecution.”
― Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

“One might well conceive all of human history as the story of humankind's journey from beauty lost to beauty gradually sought and regained. Never, over the centuries, has the human need for beauty been extinguished...Art, somehow removed from the practical demands of everyday life, reveals that our kinship is not with the biological world only; it is also with the spiritual world.”
― Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography

“Yet dawn is ever the hope of men,’ said Aragorn.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings