Quotes About Appreciation

Matt was the only adult who understood Ralph. "Yes, sir, that mouse is a mouse in a million," he often told himself.

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.

Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.

it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.

If there's one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.

Salamanders are interesting, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.

You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It's just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing." "What's that?" "It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could all go up in a puff of smoke."           HOWE

We live in a world that has practically no appreciation for quality, tradition, or classiness, and in which people who can't spell even common words get to decide what survives. That

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here – and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life at all in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course. We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a trick we have only just begun to grasp.

It is only the brevity of lifetimes that keeps us from appreciating the changes.

All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.

We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better.

It really doesn't pay to go back and look again at the things that once delighted you, because it's unlikely they will delight you now.

significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day; more being lost, too), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 18,500 medieval churches, and 2,500 museums containing 170 million objects. Having such a fund of richness means that it can sometimes be taken for granted to a shocking degree, but

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here—and by "we" I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better.

That was the golden age of moss collecting.

Quality of life, I decided, is my fourth point. There is something in the pace and scale of British life–an appreciation of small pleasures, a kind of restraint with respect to greed, generally speaking–that makes life strangely agreeable. The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely enlivened when presented with a hot beverage and a small plain biscuit.

The positive side of thinking you are about to die is that it does make you glad of the little life that is left to you.

And thus I was to be found, in the first week of June, standing on the banks of the Shenandoah again, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, blinking at a grey sky and trying to pretend that with all my heart this was where I wanted to be.

The most expensive of all was verdigris, which was made by hanging copper strips over a vat of horse dung and vinegar and then scraping off the oxidized copper that resulted. It is the same process that turns copper domes and statues green – just quicker and more commercial – and it made 'the delicatest Grass-green in the world', as one eighteenth-century admirer enthused. A room painted in verdigris always produced an appreciative 'ah' in visitors.

I was beginning to appreciate that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences of everyday life that the most ordinary things -- processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously beaded with condensation -- fill you with wonder and gratitude.