The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.

Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten!

The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.

Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,—the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.

[Nuclear weapons] now I think I mentioned around 27,000 and during the Cold War the total global arsenal was on the order of 70,000.

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.

When I look up into the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is I really see there, I am constrained to say, ´there is no god´.