“We can stage our own act on the planet-build our cities on its plains, dam its rivers, plant its topsoils-but our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds, for instance. We do not eat many of them; we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds. We can only witness them-whoever they are. If we were not here, they would be songbirds falling in the forest. If we were not here, material events like the passage of seasons would lack even the meager meanings we are able to muster for them. The show would play to an empty house, as do all those falling stars which fall in the daytime. That is why I take walks: to keep an eye on things.”

“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

“There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.”

“Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.”

“Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.”

“As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.”

“The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance.”

“It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.”

“You can't test courage cautiously.”

“The surest sign of age is loneliness.”

“There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary a batch of technical skills and equipment and perhaps a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things of their complexity fascination and unexpectedness.”