Great green thoughts

Food for thought
As you read this, I will be on vacation. I thought I would leave you with some quotes to ponder.

John Muir:

“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”

“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”

“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature’s darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature’s sources never fail.”

Luther Burbank:

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”

Walt Whitman:

“Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.”

“Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”

William Blake:

“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”

“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.”

George Washington Carver:

“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.”

“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.”

Henry David Thoreau:

“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

“Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.”

Mary Oliver:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”