Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice. – Henry Ward Beecher

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. – Author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther