"The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses."

Hanna Rion

"I am guilty of living well, and in comfort, and hiding with the shadows of our majestic American steeples. I would hope we could walk out of our comfort, once in a while, to feel the heat of Truth on our faces."

Kevin Max

"We had found a country where people treated one another well, with respect, and where there were values other than grab, grab, grab, which prevails back home. I felt humbled, in a way. Everything about my own country seemed so shoddy and superficial when held up against what I saw in Africa."

"People suffered here, and many of them had very little, but they had this wonderful feeling for others. When I first heard African people calling others - complete strangers - their brother or their sister, it sounded odd to my ears. But after a while I knew exactly what it meant and I started to think the same way.... I wish I could have called my friends 'my sisters' but it would have sounded contrived. But that is how I felt. I was learning lessons. I had come to Africa and I was learning lessons."

Alexander McCall Smith, Tears of the Giraffe

Richard Yaco, Butterfly Beach

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure."

Oprah Winfrey

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

Confucius

"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."

from The Wonder Years

"To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be."

Anna Louise Strong

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

Henry Rollins

"Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the
soul of God shouting for joy."

William Blake

Whenever someone sorrows, I do not say, "forget it," or "it will pass," or "it could be worse" - all of which deny the integrity of the painful experience. But I say, to the contrary, "It is worse than you may allow yourself to think. Delve into the depth. Stay with the feeling. Think of it as a precious source of knowledge and guidance. Then and only then will you be ready to face it and be transformed in the process."

Peter Koestenbaum

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

Robert Frost

"God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars."

Martin Luther