Friday, February 15, 2013

a well-lived life (the hopeful version!)

"...but could we but live a million of years, then how delightful to spend in perfect contentment so many thousand years in quiet study in college, as many amid the grateful din of machines, as many among human pain, so many thousand in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles and dells of Scotland, and all the other less important parts of our world! Then perhaps might we, with at least a show of reason, 'shuffle off this mortal coil' and look back upon our star with something of satisfaction...

Eternity, with perhaps the whole unlimited creation of God as our field, should satisfy us, and make us patient and trustful, while we pray with the Psalmist, 'Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.'..."

- John Muir in a letter to Mrs. Jeanne Carr, 1866

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