“Do you not weep? Other sins only speak, murder shreaks out:The element of water moistens the earth,But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.”

“The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.”

“Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to 'fly upwards”

“The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing.”

“I am a mixture of contradictory elements. Equal parts earth and fire, melancholy and choler, I fear. But it is more that warmth and blue skies stir the blood, do you not think?”

“He scrambled to grab a hose and pointed it at us. A pathetic stream of water trickled out.What are you going to do? Giguhl said. Moisten us?”