The Perfectionist's
SanctuaryIsmEscape SanctuaryThe Perfectionist's
SanctuaryIsmEscape Sanctuary
.: this is my sanctuary
||| this is my religion :.
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Of course, feel free to download any images should your peace-lovin'
desires.
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"I have never found a companion that was so
companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when
we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will." Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden. |
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"The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render
men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human." Victor Hugo (1802-85), French poet, dramatist, novelist. Les Misérables, bk. 2, ch. 6, "Fantine" (1862). |
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"Mountains are to the rest of the body of the
earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy
are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and
strength." John Ruskin (1819-1900), English art critic, author. Modern Painters, vol. 1, pt. 2, sct. 4, ch. 1, para. 3 (1843). |
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"Only the desert has a fascination--to ride
alone--in the sun in the forever unpossessed country--away from man. That is a great temptation..." D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Letter, 29 Sept. 1922, written while in the U.S. (published in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 4, ed. by James T. Boulton, E. Mansfield, and W. Roberts, 1987). |
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"After you have exhausted what there is in
business, politics, conviviality, and so on, have found that none of these finally satisfy, or
permanently wear--what remains? Nature remains." Walt Whitman (1819-92), U.S. poet. Specimen Days and Collect, "New Themes Entered Upon" (1882). |
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"We can never have enough of nature. We must be
refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its
wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which
lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some
life pasturing freely where we never wander." Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden, "Spring" (1854). |
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"Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of
creation to even higher levels." Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), Italian author, playwright. The Father, in Six Characters: In Search of an Author, act 1 (1921). |
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"...Shadows on the hills, Sketch the trees and the daffodils, Catch the breeze and the winter chills, In colors on the snowy linen land..." Don McLean: "Vincent" |
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"It is not the language of painters but the
language of nature which one should listen to....The feeling for the things themselves, for reality,
is more important than the feeling for pictures." Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), Dutch painter. Letter, 21 July 1882, to his brother Theo (published in The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, vol. 1, 1958). |
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"Nature breaks through the eyes of the cat." Irish Proverb. |
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"Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem." Emily Dickinson (1830-86), U.S. poet. The Complete Poems, no. 1075 (1955). |
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"Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel." Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet. Mont Blanc. |
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"Sun-rise, sun-set... Swiftly flow the days; Seedlings turn overnight to sun-flow'rs, Blossoming even as we gaze. Sun-rise, sun-set... Swiftly fly the years; One season following another, Laden with happiness...and tears." Sheldon Harnick & Jerry Bock. From the musical "Fiddler on the Roof", 1964. |
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"There is hope from the sea, but none from the
grave." Irish Proverb. |
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"The sea...evening beneath the moon...Arab symbols
with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well
they accompany sadness!" Albert Camus (1913-60), French-Algerian philosopher, author. American Journals (1978; tr. 1988), written 3 July 1949, while crossing the Atlantic en route to South America. |
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"At the heart of all beauty lies something
inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute
lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise...that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd." Albert Camus (1913-60), French-Algerian philosopher, author. The Myth of Sisyphus, ch. 1, "Absurd Walls" (1942; tr. 1955). |
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"Nature is a collective idea, and, though its
essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single
object." Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Swiss-born English artist, critic. Lectures on Painting, "First Lecture" (1801). Quoted in: The Mind of Henry Fuseli, pt. 4, ch. 1, "Nature, a Collective Idea" (ed. by Eudo C. Mason, 1951). |
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"Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of
nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for
its conquest." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher. The Birth of Tragedy, ch. 24 (1872). |
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"However much you knock at nature's door,
she will never answer you in comprehensible words." Ivan Turgenev (1818-83), Russian author. Shubin, in On the Eve, ch. 1 (1860), comparing nature to "life" (in fact women). |
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"In the arms of an angel fly away from here from this dark cold hotel room and the endlessness that you fear you are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie you're in the arms of the angel may you find some comfort here." Sarah McLachlan: "Angel" |
| Quotes sources: Most quotations were excerpted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1993, 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. All song lyrics were collected here and there from various Web sites. | |
