Leaf

It came to me in a flash that in the organ of the plant which we are accustomed to call the leaf lies the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms.  From first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other.

J.W. v Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, 1790
 

Arunachala

"In November 1895 Venkataraman realized that Arunachala, the sacred mountain, was a real place. He had known of its existence from an early age, and was overwhelmed by the realisation that it really existed...."

Weil 5

There are certain joys -- and they are the most precious -- which, when imagined, are extremely pale; whose whole value consists in their presence itself.  We lack stimulus to seek out these pale joys, even though it cost only a slight effort, unless.... 
(May I no longer commit this crime towards myself of allowing them to slip by.)    
--  Simone Weil

Weil 4

How poore, how narrow, how impious a measure of God, is this, that he must doe, as thou wouldest doe, if thou wert God.

John Donne, sermon preached in St. Paul's Jan. 30, 1625

Weil 2

Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light— and in the best of cases the fullness of light — in the heart of that same religious tradition. … It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church.  
 
Simone Weil, Letter to a Priest