. . . every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

Life may take away happiness. But it can't take away having had it.

The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living.

The hardest thing to believe when you're young is that people will fight to stay in a rut, but not to get out of one.

... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

there are times when life surprises one, and anything may happen, even what one had hoped for.