Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.

"To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work. To take a negative experience and, by comparing it to something worse, make it feel good, is the great skill."

Who knows the flower best? - the one who reads about it in a book, or the one who finds it wild on the mountainside?

Landscapes have a language of their own, expressing the soul of the things, lofty or humble, which constitute them, from the mighty peaks to the smallest of the tiny flowers hidden in the meadow's grass.

Work cannot convey the almost voluptuous sweetness of the feelings experienced ... in solitude.

Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.

Nature has a language of its own, or maybe those who have lived long in solitude read in it their own unconscious inner feelings and mysterious foreknowledge.