I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said. "You get hold of their soul then.
Interpretation
Appreciating beauty often requires deeper engagement and contemplation.
The quote expresses a profound appreciation for the subtler aspects of nature, suggesting that true understanding and connection arise when we engage with beauty on a deeper level, even in unconventional circumstances. The darkness represents a space where one can focus more intently on the essence or 'soul' of the flowers, encouraging a sense of mindfulness and appreciation for the natural world that may be overlooked in the light.
In practice
In a discussion about mindfulness and nature, you could reference this quote to emphasize the importance of deeper connections.
A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.
A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.
Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!" (Anne to Gilbert)
Youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.
I care to live only to entice people to look at Natureβs loveliness.
It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.
Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
There is a way of beholding nature which is a form of prayer, a way of minding something with such clarity and aliveness that the rest of the world recedes. It . . . gives the brain a small vacation.
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
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