John Sexton Quotes

I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

She would sit by herself in the middle of the old stoe amphitheatre, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her.

But I try to steal other moments. Sometimes I get up very early in the morning and enjoy a quiet house and cup of tea before the craziness begins. Other times, I'll take a quick walk on the beach. You can find peace in a few minutes.

Seek out a tree and let it teach you stillness.

In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet.

I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.

Still photographs often differ from life more by their silence than by the immobility of their subjects. Landscape pictures tend to converge with life, however, on summer nights, when the sounds outside, after we call in children and close garage doors, are small - the whir of moths, the snap of a stick.

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden want o'er the landscape; Trinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain, you pause and exclaim, 'Ah,' you are participating in divinity.

There is still time - in the lee, in the quiet, in the extraordinary light.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

When the magic hour arrives, my thoughts center on light rather than on the landscape. I search for perfect light, then hunt for something earthbound to match with it.

...So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

I’ve always felt that night doesn’t fall. Night rises.

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.

The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade.

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Have you ever noticed how quiet you get when you go in the woods? It's almost like you know that God's there.

I'll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.

After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars

Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.

We live in such a noisy world that we need to stop and just let things happen. Let it grow.