“Ugolin listened to these insanes declarations with amazement and bitterly regretted that he had taken so much trouble planting these horrors that so transported with ectasy” P. 66 “I drink to Mother Nature, to the fragrant hills, I drink to the cicadas, to the pine woods, to the breeze, to the rocks of thousands of years, I drink to the blue sky!” P. 71 “I came to the irrefutable conclusion that the only possible happiness was to be a man of Nature. I need air, I need space to crystallize my thoughts. I am more interested in what is true, pure, free in a work, authentic, and I came here to cultivate the authentic.” P. 75 “I want to live in communion with Nature, I want to eat the vegetables of my garden, the oil of my olive trees, to such the fresh eggs of my chickens, to get drunk on the wine of my vines, and as far as possible to eat the bread I make with my wheat” P. 75” “What attracts me here is first of all my love of nature. But although I don’t lack money at present, I have a family to feed, and I must assure my little daughter’s future; that’s why the philosopher in me has had to reconcile his desire for the natural life with his obligation to make a fortune” (faith in nature) “Air of the hills was making a new man of him…” P. 105 “If we had a spring like that there’d be no problem…we’ll trust to statistics and Providence.” P. 120 “In three weeks there were three nightly falls of rain. And so the four Asiatic pumpkins climbed the trellis and mixed their lighter green with the vines. The sainfoin and the clover abounded to a form a little meadow, a little humped in places as the Papet had foreseen, but dense and thick and dark green…” P.127 “Mother nature always nourishes her children. Our temporary poverty has forced us for some time to eat nothing but the produce of the season, and especially the wild produce that comes from the earth of the Good Lord with no fertilizer other than natural humus…”P. 137 “It was the fifth of July that the delayed