The grand show is eternal
it is always sunrise somewhere;
the dew is never dried all at once;
a shower is forever falling;
vapour is ever rising.
Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming,
on sea and continents
and islands, each in its turn,
as the round earth rolls

John Muir

I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I realized then that we could not hold our own with the white men. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.

Chief Joseph – Nez Perce

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens
~ Carl Gustav Jung


There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
~ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Happiness is the art of making a bouquet of those flowers within reach
~ Pissaro

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.

~ Ansel Adams


For every beauty there is
an eye to see it
For every truth there is
An ear to hear it
For every love there is
a heart somewhere to receive it
~ Ivan Panin

The deepest words
Of the wise man teach us
The same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
Or the sound of the water when it is flowing
~ Antonio Machado

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

.. For the artistic trend slumbering in the breast of every person and expressing itself so richly in the child, never dies in us.
~ Wilhelm Stekel - Psychology of the Artist

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
~ Buddha

Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ’infested’ with ’wild’ animals and ’savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.

~ Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux (1863-1950)

Just makin up poems in my head as I climb toward Mount Tamalpais. See up there, as beautiful a mountain as you’ll see anywhere in the world, a beautiful shape to it, I really love Tamalpais.
~ The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

~ 14th Dalai Lama, Buddhist

I love this land and the buffalo and will not part with it. I want you to understand well what I say. Write it on paper...I hear a great deal of good talk from the gentlemen the Great Father sends us, but they never do what they say. I don't want any of the medicine lodges (schools and churches) within the country. I want the children raised as I was.

I have heard you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. I don't want to settle. I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die.

A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers, but when I go up to the river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber, they kill my buffalo and when I see that, my heart feels like bursting.

~ Santana, Kiowa Chief

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.

~ Chief Red Cloud