Augusta > Augusta's Quotes

“Do you know a cure for me?"

"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."

"Salt water?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”
― Isak Dinesen

“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. ”
― Isak Dinesen, Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny

“It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.”
― Isak Dinesen

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
― John Muir, The Mountains of California

“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe

[Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]”
― John Muir

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
― John Muir

“One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.”
― John Muir, Our National Parks

“Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.”
― John Muir

“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties”
― John Muir

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Voila! Bookshelves!”
― Jan Karon

“Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.”
― Jan Karon

“The firefly only shines when on the wing, So it is with us--when we stop, we darken.”
― Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford

“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh