in Thoreau’s Journal:

I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfaction and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive in my daily walk, the conversations of my neighbors, may inspire me and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

Every blade in the field—Every leaf in the forest—lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.
— Thoreau, correspondence to Emerson, March 11, 1842