How do you know that the pilgrim track 

Along the belting zodiac 

Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds 

Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds 

And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud 

Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, 

And never as yet a tinct of spring 

Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling; 

 O vespering bird, how do you know, 

 How do you know?

from The Year's Awakening

by Thomas Hardy

“Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man! 

I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! 

You have never seen the like of me before!” 

from A Christmas Carol 

by Charles Dickens

“Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. 

Nature should be viewed without distinction… She makes no choice 

herself; everything that happens has equal significance. 

Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common mistake 

that many people make: They think that half of nature 

can be destroyed — the uncomfortable half 

— while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side.”

 – Eliot Porter

“Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.” 

– Eliot Porter

“Big Ben was beginning to strike, first the warning, musical; 

then the hour, irrevocable.” 

from Mrs Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

“Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, 

and we use the rubble of the old to raise up the new ones.” 

from The City's Son

by Tom Pollock