Quotation Saturday

SPRING

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
~W. Earl Hall

I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth?
~Edward Giobbi

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
~Bern Williams

GARDENS

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
~Dorothy Frances Gurney, "Garden Thoughts"

I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me.
~Robert Brault
 
Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. ~Karel Čapek, The Gardener's Year
 
I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself. And I find sufficient purpose for my day.
~Robert Brault

BUTTERFLIES

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.
~R.H. Heinlein
 
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
~Attributed to George Carlin
 
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
~Robert Frost, "Blue-Butterfly Day"

Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time.
~Deborah Chaskin
 
We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

BIRDS

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
~Henry David Thoreau
 
Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers - a living prismatic gem.... it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.
~W.H. Hudson, Green Mansions

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
~Henry Ward Beecher
 
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
~Chinese Proverb

Mansions in the sky, tethered to the wind they cry. Man cannot see eye to eye, in the beauty of the butterfly!
~Joni Zipp