Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.

I think the dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door.

The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.