“Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.”

Forward (April 2011)
God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations (2011)
Context: Some of my friends are skeptical when they hear me say this, but I am by nature a person who dislikes confrontation. I have consciously sought during my lifetime to emulate my mother, whom our family knew as a gentle “comforter of the afflicted.” However, when I see innocent people suffering, pushed around by the rich and the powerful, then, as the prophet Jeremiah, says, if I try to keep quiet is is as if the word of God burned like a fire in my breast. I feel compelled to speak out, sometimes to even argue with God over how a loving creator can allow this to happen.
In the Church of Sant'Egido in Rome, home of an extraordinary community of lay people devoted to working with the poor, there is an old crucifix that portrays Christ without arms. When I asked about its importance to the community, I was told that it shows how God relies on us to do God's work in the world.
Without us, God has no eyes, without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us. Won't you join other people of faith in becoming God's partners in the world?

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

As quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas, p. 225
Variant translation: Before the passing sky, in long hours of contemplation of its magnificent and ever-changing beauty, I am seized by an incomparable emotion. The whole expanse of nature is reflected in my own sincere and feeble soul. Around me the branches of trees reach out toward the firmament, here are sweet-scented flowers smiling in the meadow, here the soft earth is carpeted with sweet herbs. … Nature invites its ephemeral and trembling travelers to experience these wonderful and disturbing spectacles — that is what I call prayer.
As quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit (2001) by H. Charles Romesburg, p. 240
Context: I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

Synesios in a comment about Demokritos, in K. C. Schmieder, The History of Alchemy (2005) p. 64; a translation of Geschichte der Alchemie (1832).

Life After God (1994)

Good Intentions (1942), Seeing Eye to Eye is Believing

Blessings (1998)
Context: When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

Fr. Paul Mailleux, "Exarch Leonid Feodorov," page 181.
In a letter to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky.

Source: The Virgin Suicides