A mix of inspirational words and images.
Photos are by the blogger.
Quotations are from a myriad of sources.
Monday, April 4, 2011
"Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more."
Vincent van Gogh
March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890
Sunday, April 3, 2011
"Each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . a picture which was never before and shall never be seen again."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882
Saturday, April 2, 2011
"Nature and peace are my shelter and companion."
Wayne Kramer
Friday, April 1, 2011
"[Butterflies are] not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures."
Elizabeth Goudge
April 24, 1900 - April 1, 1984
Thursday, March 31, 2011
"Everything in life is speaking in spite of it's apparent silence."
Hazrat Inayat Khan
July 5, 1882 - February 5, 1927
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
"The butterfly is a flying flower, the flower a tethered butterfly."
Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun
August 11, 1729 - August 31, 1807
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
"The meaning of the life is not to be discovered only after death in some hidden, mysterious realm; on the contrary, it can be found ... by living in the here and now as fully and creatively as we can."
Paul Kurtz
born December 21, 1925
Monday, March 28, 2011
"Little flower, but if I could understand, what you are, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
Alfred Tennyson
August 6, 1809 - October 6, 1892
Sunday, March 27, 2011
"Lichens are a successful alliance between a fungus and an alga. Each doing what it does best, and thriving as a result of a natural cooperation. They live as one organism, both inhabiting the same body."
Oregon State University Lichenland
Saturday, March 26, 2011
"It is not the mountain that we conquer but ourselves."
Edmund Hillary
July 20, 1919 - January 11, 2008
Friday, March 25, 2011
"Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine."
Jeffrey Glassberg
Thursday, March 24, 2011
"Memories are forget-me-nots gthered along life's way. Pressed close to the human heart into a perennial bouquet."
Clara Smith Reber
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
"Butterflies are self propelled flowers."
R. H. Heinlein
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
"Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind."
Henry Ward Beecher
June 24, 1813 - March 8, 1887
Monday, March 21, 2011
"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864
Sunday, March 20, 2011
"A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen."
Henry David Thoreau
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862
Saturday, March 19, 2011
"When words escape, flowers speak."
Bruce W. Currie
Friday, March 18, 2011
"I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation -- the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence."
Aldous Huxley
July 26, 1894 - November 22, 1963
Thursday, March 17, 2011
"Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun."
Kahlil Gibran
January 6, 1883 - April 10, 1931
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children."
John James Audubon
April 26, 1785 - January 27, 1851
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
"Nature will not be admired by proxy."
Winston Churchill
November 30, 1874 - January 24, 1965
Monday, March 14, 2011
"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful."
Luther Burbank
March 7, 1849 - April 11, 1926
Sunday, March 13, 2011
"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright /
In the forests of the night, /
What immortal hand or eye /
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
William Blake
November 28, 1757 - August 12, 1827
Saturday, March 12, 2011
"It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves."
Carl Jung
July 26, 1875 - June 6, 1961
Friday, March 11, 2011
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings."
John Muir
April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914
Thursday, March 10, 2011
"All good things are wild, and free."
Henry David Thoreau
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
"Art gallery? Who needs it? Look up at the swirling silver-lined clouds in the magnificent blue sky. How could indoor art be any more masterfully creted than God's museum of nature?"
Grey Livingston
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882
Monday, March 7, 2011
"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountain rise into and above the clouds."
Edward Abbey
January 29, 1927 - March 14, 1989
Sunday, March 6, 2011
"This world is but a canvas to our imaginations."
Henry David Thoreau
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862
Saturday, March 5, 2011
"Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do."
The purpose of this blog is to share some of my original nature photographs. Each photo will be enhanced by a spiritual and/or life-affirming quotation. The inspiration for this dates way back to a book published in 1962. It was published by the Sierra Club and entitled "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World." Selected quotations from Henry David Thoreau were paired with photographs by Eliot Porter. Since then I have taken thousands of photographs myself. Nothing as profound or professional as those by Porter, but meaningful to me and some of my friends and family. My own philosophy of what is worth living and celebrating in life also has a very strong center in inspirational words. I am a librarian, therefore I read. One of the most recent books I reviewed featured characters who would place life-affirming quotations in a jar and pull one out to read when things were looking bleak. Somehow, after all these decades, this idea paired up with that Sierra Club book in my mind, and this blog was born. Enjoy and feel free to comment.