The only name for the faculty by which we can discern the element of Beauty which is present in every fact, we must discern in every fact before it becomes truth for us, is love ... The relation between those things is simple and inextricable. When we love a fact, it becomes truth; when we attain that detachment from our passions whereby it becomes possible for us to love all facts, then we have reached our peace. If a truth cannot be loved, it is not truth, but only fact. But the fact does not change in order that it might become truth; it is we who change. All fact is beautiful; it is we who have to regain our innocence to see its beauty.
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, intelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen.