"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful ...."

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Henry David Thoreau

"Though we travel the world over ...."

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Dwell on the beauty of life ...."

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Marcus Aurelius

Bird brain?  But it's a wonderful life!

"The job is to seek mystery ...."

The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.  The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

Ken Kesey

"With their whole gaze ...."

With their whole gaze

animals behold the Open.

Only our eyes

are as though reversed

and set like traps around us,

keeping us inside.

That there is something out there

we know only from the creatures’ countenance.

We turn even the young child around,

making her look backward

at the forms we create,

not outward into the Open,

which is reflected

in the animals’ eyes ….

Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy”