“What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no de...”

“A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hop...”

“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.”

“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,Stuffed with the stuff that is course...”

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,They scorn the best I can do to relate them.”

“How can you be so nice to me and how can you forgive me when Ive been such a jerk? Maddy appears to think for a moment. When you are reading a book and you finish a chapter, you dont keep re-readin...”

“Knowledge is power, I said at last. "Let's do it.”

“Accept 'what is' they say. What if I don't want to?”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”

“Humans are a terrestrial species biased toward attributing the forces we see around us to familiar forces on land. But the more we look, the more we learn that everything arises from the sea and ev...”

“This beach I voyage on leads me through the earth's immortal consistencies. Each form I encounter obeys the principles of perfection and trial, a timelessness in the making. The proportions of trut...”

“That is the normal succession of things in this part of the world; you can see the various stages all over Scratch Flat. There is, for example, a small red maple swamp above my house on the northwe...”