[purepisces]

There is religion in everything around us, a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things in Nature. It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in as it were unaware upon the heart. It comes quickly, and without excitement; it has no terror, no gloom. It does not rouse up the passions. It is untrammeled by creeds. It is written on the arched sky. It looks out from every star. It is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind. It is among the hills and valleys of the earth where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage. It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of an unsleeping ocean. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us and which opens to our imagination of world of spiritual beauty and holiness. ~ John Ruskin