Henry van Dyke

Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in and around your lettuce and green beans.

Love is not getting, but giving, not a wild dream of pleasure, and madness of desire- . . . it is goodness, and honor, and peace and pure living.

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.

Remember that what you possess in this world will be found on the day of your death to belong to somebody else. But what you are will be yours forever.

Ere thou sleepest, gently lay Every troubled thought away; Put off worry and distress As thou puttest off thy dress; Drop thy burden and thy care In the quiet arms of prayer. Lord thou knowest how I live, All I'VE DONE AMISS FORGIVE; ALL OF GOOD I'VE TRIED TO DO STRENGTHEN, bless and carry through; All I love in safety keep While in Thee I fall asleep.

Tact is the unsaid part of what you think; its opposite, the unthought part which you say.

Time is . . . Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve Too short for those who rejoice; But for those who love. . . Time is Eternity!

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

We may be able to tell how many stars are in the Milky Way; we may be able to count the petals of every flower, and number the bones of every bird; but unless faith leads us to a deeper understanding, a more reverent comprehension of the significance of the universe, God can be no more pleased with our knowledge than the painter is pleased with the fly which touches his picture with its feelers, and sips the varnish from the surface, and dies without dreaming of the meaning, thought, feeling, embodied in the colors.