Nothing is so beautiful as spring – when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush Thrushs eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing. – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. – Leonardo da Vinci

Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man. – George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896