Echoes

What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It's about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how — because we can't write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That's what has driven me.

Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am a man; nothing human is alien to me.)

One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. And you never meet the people, you never shake their hands, you never hear their story or tell yours, but somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something is transmitted there.

So long as you cling to your fear of dying, you will hear neither the voice of life nor the voice of your soul. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy.

Nature of the world was not created for us by divine will: such great fault is inherent in it.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's; I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence.

When despair for the world grows in me I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life.

I live my life in widening circles / that reach out across the world.

Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life — no disgrace, no calamity — which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The beginnings of all things are small.

O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.

Many things which nature makes difficult become easy to the man who uses his brains.

The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.