It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial. – Edgar Allan Poe

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”

Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him. – H. G. Wells