Whenever nature leaves a hole in a persons mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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”