What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
– Henry David Thoreau

As the tree is fertilized by its own broken branches and fallen leaves and grows out of its own decay, so [people] and nations are bettered and improved by trial and refined out of broken hopes and blighted expectations.
– F.W. Robinson

People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing river. They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather, they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and enjoy the adventure.
– David Steindl-Rast


Saint Teresa of Avila was a very strong woman who reformed the Carmelite Order, and is one of the three women doctors of the Church, along with Saints Therese of Lisieux (another Carmelite) and Catherine of Siena (a Dominican).
For prayer is nothing else than being on the terms of friendship with God.
– St. Teresa of Avila
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
– Thomas Merton

I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to be found and lost than Paris. And the impressionist work in Musee D’Orsay is wonderful to behold. I found this piece to be especially inviting.