some Adam Bede...

Blind Love:
People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it. -George Eliot

Education:
But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with 'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of thinking you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you. -George Eliot, Adam Bede

Social Events cause stress, but working all day is better!:
"I'd sooner ha' brewin' day and washin' day together than one o' these pleasurin' days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; an' keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day, for fear people shouldna think you civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't when it's done, if it isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree." -George Eliot, Adam Bede

Even George Eliot thought spelling was terrible...

"It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble, ... — to get the mastery of his pen, and write a plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller..." -Adam Bede

Joy.

The life you are meant to find will wring your heart to the point of breaking and then douse you with buckets of joy when you're not looking. --- Linford Detweiler

Annie Dillard's For The Time Being

"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as read in Dillard's book.

"[The Labor and Delivery Unit of the hospital is] the wildest deep sea vent on earth…where the people come out"

“The very least likely things for which God might be responsible are what insurers call ‘acts of God.'" (of course this quote depends on your theology, but it's funny nonetheless.)

On writing letters. ha.

...the image of paul bent over his page, filling it with inky letters, illuminated by a flickering oil lamp, is a judgement on anyone who has ever claimed to have "no time to write,"... Cahill page 130 "Desire of the Everlasting Hills"

Beautiful quotes about Gardens and Plants

"Plants embody everything that I like to have around me: presence, personality, character. They are supple and therefore strong, yet softly-spoken and gentle; they are fragrant and delicate; they have movement, colour, structure, scale and proportion. Plants are large in form, tiny in detail and always a single whole. Plants are beautiful in sun and rain, in tropical heat, fighting immortal cold, dancing in the wind, buffeted by storms.
Plants have long been part of the earth’s history. They come from afar. Their beauty is deep and beyond question. It can be overwhelming; their fragrance beguiling. I look at my garden and I see vibrancy, opulence, serenity; I see dignity, playfulness, infinite tenderness, the nodding kindness of Herb Roberti, and in the larger, beautiful picture, I discover small, modest dots of colour that enhance the luxuriant whole."


"A garden is the most intimate landscape ensemble I know of. It is close to us. In it we cultivate the plants we need. A garden requires care and protection. And so we encircle it, we defend it and fend for it. We give it shelter. The garden turns into a place.

Enclosed gardens fascinate me. A forerunner of this fascination is my love of the fenced vegetable gardens on farms in the Alps, where farmers’ wives often planted flowers as well. I love the image of these small rectangles cut out of vast alpine meadows, the fence keeping the animals out. There is something else that strikes me in this image of a garden fenced off within the larger landscape around it: something small has found sanctuary within something big."

(to see the whole article, go here- http://archidose.blogspot.com/2011/07/half-dose-89-serpentine-gallery.html )

Quote about hearts

All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.)

-Catherynne Valente "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her own Making"