What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
(~Anne Lamott)

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...'

(~Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

when green becomes tomatoes there will be sky and sun and possibly a 
     cloud or two
when green becomes tomatoes there will be leaves and flowers tall and 
     standing straight and someone splashing, jumping, diving down
when green becomes tomatoes there will be wings and something inching, 
     green and small and a sweetly, tweetly chirping song
when green becomes tomatoes there will be round and there will be red 
     and there will be tomatoes (more red than green) (more round than 
     seed) (more on the vine than way deep down)
when green becomes tomatoes
(~Julie Fogliano)

The half-life of love is forever.
(~Junot Diaz)

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. 
(~John Lubbock)

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away,--
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone,--
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.

(~Emily Dickinson)

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness. 

(~Pearl S. Buck)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. 

(~J.R.R. Tolkien)

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. 

(~Michael Ondaatje)

I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to. 

(~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. 

(~Kate Chopin)

“Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is his cry because he suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if he had not first taught us the way. . . . There are times when we cannot cry at all, and then he cries in us. There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name.”
(~C. H. Spurgeon, “Adoption –The Spirit and the Cry” (MTP 24, Sermon 1435, p. 537))