Karen Joy Fowler Quotes

Life is full of beauty. Notice it.

There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. So we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. Thus we sit, I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! How rich it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up into my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.

Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally Id see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I WOULD be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.

Egolessness is contentment. Egoless, you don't expect anything, and just a small child smiles at you, but it is so beautiful. What else could you need? Suddenly you see a flower and the flower sends its perfume to you. What else could you need? What more could you want? The whole sky goes on filling with stars, the whole life becomes a celebration because now everything is beautiful. Without expectation everything fulfills - just to breathe is enough, just to breathe is such a bliss.

Since my stroke, I have begun to see so many miracles all around me. I look out of the window in my room: verdant grass, silver-tipped oak leaves, tall palm trees gentle swaying as they reach to the sky, masses and masses of roses. All colors, so many shapes, exquisite fragrances.

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.

Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness.

There isn't a flight goes by when I don't stare out of the window and thank my stars for what I'm seeing and feeling.

For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing.

All that we behold is full of blessings.

It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.

One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, "How beautiful the world could be.

Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it

What lovely things Thy hand hath made.

Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.

What if the beauty around us is meant as a reminder for the many gifts we have been given and our need to give thanks to them?

As we drifted to earth I sat up on the glass roof of the capsule, watching the beauty of the golden dawn as it broke over the desert. This was a day I never thought I'd see and the rising sun and growing warmth of the day seemed very precious. It made me aware that hard-won things are more valuable than those that come too easily. It reminded me to always enjoy the moment.

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

All that is beautiful, and all that looks on beauty with eyes filled with fire, like a lover's eyes: all of this is yours; you gave it to me, sunlight! all these stars are yours; you gave them to me, skies!