Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. – Diane Ackerman
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. – Diane Ackerman
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is. – Diane Ackerman
After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm. – Diane Ackerman
Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”
The clouds were drifting over the moon at their giddiest speed, at one time wholly obscuring her, at another, suffering her to burst forth in full splendor and shed her light on all the objects around; anon, driving over her again, with increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness. – Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
And now it has risen above the massive and lofty tree, and throws its pleasant shadow down upon the earth—pleasant shadow that paces along the meadows, leaving behind a greater brilliancy on tree, and grass, and hedge, and flower than what, for a moment, it had eclipsed. – William Smith, Gravenhurst, or Thoughts on Good and Evil, 1862