“Most of us are used to thinking that imaginary is the opposite of real. That is, when we imagine things, we are just making them up. In the spiritual life, though, there are some realities that can...”

“Grieving the loss of a loved onewhether human or animalis not only permissible, it is essential.”

“The animals feel that this urgency is mutual. Their own suffering has made them aware of human suffering. More frequent contact with us has sensitized them to what troubles us. They feel our anxiet...”

“The inner encounters I have with animalsand will be teaching you to have are exchanges of meaning.”

“When you have succeeded in letting go of a trivial preoccupation or two, your awareness will begin to expand into the deeper sources of stress in your life, the bigger uncontrollable things that yo...”

“Every species embodies a solution to some environmental challenge, and some of these solutions are breathtaking in their elegance.”

“Even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished animals in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them ...”

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

“Scenery is fine -but human nature is finer”

“As for me, I have a choice between honoring that dark life I've seen so many years moving in the junipers, or of walking away and going on with my own human busyness. There is always that choice fo...”

“Nature allows one kind to kill another, it's part of the law ... you wonder if man might not be the most savage of all creatures. He's among the few that preys on nearly every other being, that con...”

“Imagine you come upon a house painted brown. What color would you say the house was?""Why brown, of course.""But what if I came upon it from the other side, and found it to be white?""That would be...”

“Values are the guiding principles that help you determine what is right or wrong.”