Let us look rather
at the beauty in diversity, the beauty of harmony, and learn a lesson from the
vegetable creation. If you beheld a garden in which all the plants were the
same as to form, colour and perfume, it would not seem beautiful to you at all,
but, rather, monotonous and dull. The garden which is pleasing to the eye and
which makes the heart glad, is the garden in which are growing side by side
flowers of every hue, form and perfume, and the joyous contrast of colour is
what makes for charm and beauty. So is it with trees…
Thus should it be
among the children of men!
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a talk, October 28, 1911, Paris; ‘Paris Talks’)
