“The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it. The great release of death, I thought, was not from the bondage to our lovely planet- who could ever wish to leave this extraordinary place?- but from one another.”

“Throughout human history beauty has been seen as a gift from God, but Mom had another notion; she thought that beauty could be earned through self-knowledge. It may be a revolutionary idea, but it has offered me great comfort.”

“Have you ever felt so at one with the world, with the universe, with everything that is, that you were overcome with love? That is reality. That is the truth. What we make of it is up to us, as the painting of the sunrise is up to the artist. In our world humanity has strayed from that love. It lives hatred and power struggles and manipulations of the earth itself for its own narrow reasons. Continue and no one will see the sunrise. The sunrise will always exist, of course, but people on earth will know nothing of it and finally even stories of its beauty will fade from our knowing.”

“Man must spend much more time in extraordinary natural places to grasp much better how remarkable our planet is and to realise what a great privilege and what an enormous joy to be living here!”

“One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit -- now struggling to quit its material tenement -- flit when at length released?”

“One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them.”