Beijing artist sells a glass jar of fresh French air at auction for $860. The move signifies the problems with Beijing air quality.

Can we put a price tag on something as invaluable as fresh air? Apparently, yes. And it happened.

Beijing-based artist Liang Kegang auctioned off a small glass jar filled with fresh air from Province, France. And the going price? $860.

While on a recent trip to the south of France, Liang couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a statement in response to the detrimental state of Beijing’s air quality issue. He photographed himself ‘filling’ the ‘clean south of France air’ into the jar on March 29, 2014. The jar sold at an auction on March 30 to Chengdu-based artist and entrepreneur Li Yongzheng.

Beijing, a city home to twenty-one million people, is one of the world’s most polluted cities. Extremely highs levels of thick smog constantly pose serious health issues to Beijing’s citizens. As the chart below shows, since April 2008, there has only been 184 days total where air quality levels were considered good.

Six years of Beijing air pollution summed up. image: Quartz

“Air should be the most valueless commodity, free to breathe for any vagrant or beggar,” Liang said in an interview. “This is my way to question China’s foul air and express my dissatisfaction.”

featured image: Sunset Noir and Home Naturals

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Despite the tragedy of shrinking a wool sweater, the deed is reversible. Here is the best laundry tip; an easy step by step tutorial on how to unshrink a wool sweater.

Have you committed the laundry sin of [gasp] shrinking a wool sweater? In the name of absent mindedness, daydreaming or just a simple mistake — I know I have! And every time I pull out that miniature version of what used to be, like some magician’s bunny hat trick, an unpleasant emotion — somewhere between stubbing my toe and obligatory laughter — wells up inside me.

But despite the initial sorrow, all is not lost for you or that sweater. Here is an easy and fast way to unshrink a wool sweater. Try it out right now or bookmark this How To, and next time you find yourself needing to unshrink a wool sweater, we’ve got you covered.

1. First, fill a sink or bucket with warm water and dissolve a quarter-size amount of both shampoo and conditioner in the water.

2. Soak the wool sweater in the mixture for about twenty minutes. Move around at first so your sweater really absorbs the shampoo and conditioner.

3. After about twenty minutes, remove sweater and lightly ring the moisture out.

4. Next, stretch the sweater, pulling on all angles to loosen the fibers. (For true precision, but a bit of uncomfortableness, you can wear the sweater while stretching it. This will help mold the shape back to your size and fit.)

5. After the sweater is stretched about 2/3 it’s original size, lay it flat or hang over a chair to dry.

6. Lastly, once the sweater is dry, put on and lightly stretch out one final time.

Voila! Enjoy many more cozy days to come with that sweater!

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image: jenny

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You will be shocked by the facts connecting our habit on social media sites and our hygiene.

Think social media is just a fun way to keep in touch with old friends and make new connections? Think again!

The infographic below, by Arjan de Raaf for Inforgraphics Lists, shows us a hard number comparison of social media sites vs. our hygiene.

Over the last decade, with the spike in global access to computers and mobile phones, coupled with the desire to create connections around the world, it’s hard to deny social networking is taking a top priority in many lives.

Okay, so we can observe and conclude this relatively easily, but the shocking infographic below shines a new spotlight on the social media craze: We are spending a lot more time hunched over social media sites than we are on keeping our bodies clean.

For example, in a single lifetime, the average person will spend thirty-eight and a half days brushing their teeth but two hundred and sixty six days on Facebook. Or, the fact that more America’s have at least one social media account rather than floss on a daily basis!

Sure, it’s fun to like, search, share, follow, tweet and comment — but let’s remind ourselves there is a lot more around us than the virtual reality. The concrete physical reality is irreplaceable, like a real smile or eye contact, there is no substitute.

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image: Infographic List

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ColumnFast fashion has ramped up the cycle of consumption to head spinning levels of (economic) efficiencies. Despite multinational corporations fueling boatloads of money into glossy marketing campaigns to keep us buying more, trends no longer represent an era of style and fashion, but one of profit. And now, the new trend is “conscious.”

Decades from now, when future generations look back on our times they will see profit was the trend. We can’t pinpoint a general style trend of the ’00s because the concept of fashion is so wrapped up in driving sales.

It wasn’t always that way. Looking back, fashionable style unraveled a rich history lesson. In all it’s grandeur, Style of the Decades was a lens to understand the zeitgeist of the times. The 1890s Gibson Girl, the 1920s rebellious flapper, the 1950s bourgeois housewife, the 1980s powersuit for work, and neon spandex for play — all allow us to sketch a silhouette and describe an era through fashion. Sure, we can certainly describe our era though fashion style, but today, instead of a silhouette, there would be a dollar sign.

Trends are tripping over themselves: Bell-bottoms to skinny jeans,  A-line dress to shift dress, above the ankle pant legs to palazzo pants, wedges to stilettos. The trend-mill of fashion is overwhelming, unfulfilling and has 99 problems — the overflowing closet being one.

What do we do with all this stuff? We put it in storage units. “There’s a lot of them. 2.35 billion — with a B — square feet in the United States, according to the Self Storage Association,” says Ira Glass in Act One of “This American Life: Contents Unknown.”

“That, in case you’re wondering, is 7.4 square feet of self storage for every man, woman, and child in this country, meaning all of us, all of us, could stand inside self storage at the same time.”

We are now surrounded with more stuff than ever before, but are undoubtedly less happy because of it. In the U.S., we spend three to four times more hours shopping than our counterparts in Europe do, says Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff. Yet, we rank 17th in the World Happiness Report.

The newly published book, “Stuffocation” by James Wallman, closely examines the hard research and psychology on the ultra importance of why now we need to spend our money on experiences more than ever.

So if we know this stuff isn’t making us happier, why do we keep buying?

To understand we’ve got to look back. Throughout the 1950s, as consumerism began to run rampant, TV dinners, laundry machines and the hamburger swept the United States. The key to this wave of efficiency could not have changed family lives forever without the skilled help of the “Mad Men”; the men of advertising that oh-so-suavely sold us polished shit, and called it gold.

The psychology of advertising, both then and now, is so good it’s scary. Campaigns expertly poke and stroke our the deepest folds of our subconscious to sell us goods we don’t need. Just like over the decades we’ve slowly been sold the idea buying more clothes is better than buying well made clothes.

“No matter how contrary, rebellious or bloody-minded you are, it is a virtual impossibility to escape the constant, dedicated, ubiquitous onslaught of marketing, and the collective mindwarp it wreaks upon society, in subtle and pervasively corrupting ways.” says Olympian wordsmith and fiery writer Cintra Wilson. “The marketplace is now so devastatingly effective at turning our desires on and off that we virtually have no unpolluted pathways through which to experience love, sex, work, family, ambition, community, identity.”

Take Febreze for instance: During the first market testings of Febreze, nobody found a habitual continued use for the product. Procter & Gamble’s heads were spinning as to why this revolutionary product wasn’t of interest to consumers. How to get it to sell? They realizes they had to make Febreze part of the cleaning routine, and change people’s habits. So Febreze was advertised as the icing on the cake after you cleaned your house — the final touch, the cherry on top. It was a matter of leading the consumer in the right direction, to sell them the illusion of completion.

Now, sixty years since the peak era of “Mad Men”, the United States is trying to cling on to meaning again. On top of the skewed relationship between our happiness and accumulation of stuff, add on environmental degradation and climate change and we don’t know where to turn.

So, how are modern companies reacting to the dismay? The multinational corporations, fast fashion chains included, are soothing our frantic conflicted conscience with “conscious” products.

I can’t help but feel manipulated by H&M’s new Conscious Collection for hitting the soft spot of the emerging value-based customer. I found myself (a true anti-H&M-er) entertaining the idea I might buy a new pair of shoes from the new ‘conscious’ collection. WAKE UP. Its business is to play on our most subconscious desires. In this case — spend as little money as possible to look like you can afford better. Add on Miranda Kerr wearing a $4.95 T-shirt; the tattooed, toned David Beckman running in boxer briefs; and now the Conscious Collection, and you’ve whipped a pleasure sensory experience for everyone. H&M is capitalizing on the current atmosphere of the market to put itself ahead, and it is a great marketing strategy. But are its seven commitments enough? Do they address the systemic issues for fast fashion, or is it just a patchwork approach? I don’t think a fast fashion company like H&M can ever be sustainable.

Plus, H&M just took second place in Ethisphere’s Wold’s Most Ethical Companies for apparel in 2014! Do you agree?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? And undoubtedly, our choices (our vote, our dollar, our decisions on where and how to shop) can affect directly thousands of people.

So what are companies like H&M’s modern solutions? Many are running conscious collections, yet still employing the same exploited workers to make the garments. Giving the buyers the illusion of providing them with greater values than are actually being given, and with little to no concrete social changes to their business structures.

I can hear the ad execs soothing me now:

You’re right darling, consumption is not helping us… the environment… or the poor people who put the crap together for no money or respect. But consumption is at the heart of America’s soul, isn’t it? So it’s easy, now shop over here, it’s made with a conscious.

Fast fashion wants us to keep buying clothes with the illusion that; a) new is better, and b) the new trends that spring up every two weeks are what you need to be cool, connected and authentic.

Let’s keep it real. If we know more things don’t make us happy, then DO something: Look into the tactical marketing campaigns of companies like H&M — are the seven commitments enough or is it just well-spoken lip-service?

Wilson said it best: “If you aren’t consciously using fashion to empower yourself, fashion is mostly likely using you to empower a brand.”

Keep in touch with Juliette on Twitter @spadesandsiLK

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image: pennuja

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EcoSalon interviews Lily Piyathaisere, the brains (and hands, and heart) behind  the made in NYC jewelry line, Gamma Folk. 

Juliette Donatelli: What is at the heart of your jewelry line Gamma Folk?

Lily Piyathaisere: Gamma Folk is really about the merging of new materials. So the new collection incorporated ceramics, which is a white earthenware clay, and I like to incorporate that with natural fibers. Everything is naturally dyed using different plant based materials including indigo and log wood. What I love about log wood is that it has a range. You can add modifiers and different things to have a range of purples to grays.

The ceramics are all hand built. It is my first time incorporating ceramics. I love the fibers but I was always looking for weight. It is a comfortable necklace but you want it to hang, and I thought it was a good was to incorporate that.

JD: Is there a history to where the fibers are sourced? Or how they are dyed?

LP:  Well, I do everything myself. I do all the dying in small batches. There are variations that occur and that is what is part of what is beautiful about it. They are all cotton.

JD: How does your customers respond to the specialty and craftsmanship behind each piece?

LP: I think that people who like my stuff, really like my stuff. Meaning they appreciate the handmade quality of it, and that there is variation. There are times I will work with people who are kind of like, “Oh that is too different.” You know, they make that point. And I always say, ‘Variations are natural.’ And that’s how you know it isn’t a good fit. The right people appreciate that. If they want something mass produced they’ve got to go elsewhere.

Part of textile arts in general is the labor part of it and embracing that part.

JD: You participated in the Market 605 pop-up shop in NYC, which brought together conscious designers throughout NYC into a single retail space. In your experience, what has the public response been to Market 605?

LP: The response from the public, whether they have found us online or through press, or even walk-throughs have been really nice. The locals around here get really excited to find something unique in this area because they have a lot of chain stores moving in, so the people that I have met get excited to see something new going on.

images: photographer Christine Han for Gamma Folk

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Value driven jewelry designer Nettie Kent talks with EcoSalon about her process, what changing color in brass jewelry really means and why she chooses to hand make her jewelry in New York City. 

Juliette Donatelli: When people find out your line is made in NYC what is the reaction you get?

Nettie Kent: Buyers here [in NYC] care. My showroom is actually in LA, it’s on the west coast, and they don’t care [laughs]. But people here definitely care. And also people that care about sustainable design, where things are made and all that–they definitely care.

One of my biggest selling points is that everything is handmade in my studio, and all my metals are recycled. I work with an amazing caster. This is all brass and he has just the best quality brass. A lot of casting techniques afterwards they rinse the casting in these super gross harsh chemicals– he doesn’t do that. And he doesn’t do that because he necessarily cares about the environment. He is so funny; his name is Frank and it is a family business. His daughters work there and so does his son, and when I first interviewed him — it was important to me — he was like, in this thick Long Island accent, “My family works here! I am not going to put that shit around here, I am not going to expose them to that.” I said I love you we are working together!

So, it’s more work because when my castings come back they are really dirty and it is more work polishing them and cleaning them up. But for me it is worth it. Sometimes is it a curse [laughs] you know. But the color I can achieve from his brass is amazing.

JD: Yeah, I would have never been able to tell it was brass, I thought it was gold. 

NK: Yeah, it is wild, [matches up gold ring against Nettie Kent brass ring] this ring is gold and you can hardly tell the difference.

Also, I don’t do any plating, plating is a really dirty business.

JD: Why is plating a dirty business? What does it entail?

NK: A lot of customers want things to be gold plated; they think it is more valuable and they think it means that it will stay. But what happens when you gold plate something is first it is washed–it has a nickel coating on it and nickel is a white metal, a lot of people are allergic to it, so that is why I say my brass is nickel-free. Because people think they are allergic to brass, it is not actually brass they are allergic to, they are allergic to nickel. So when something is plated it is dipped in a nickel bath and then dipped in the gold. So between the brass and the gold it has this kind of like a poison on it. It is really hard. The only kind of plating that lasts a long time is micron, and  it is a real thick layer. And it very expensive. It is hard actually to find someone in New York that is good at it. Rhode Island is actually the best.

So I just decided not to do it. People ask me too, and I say sorry I just don’t do gold plating. If you me to make it in gold, I would love to make it in gold for you. It is just not part of what I do.

Here I am going to all these lengths to make my jewelry and make my practice clean. And then to cover it in that seemed totally silly.

I love brass, I love how it changes color with the environment and ages. And it is just an interesting metal. It reacts to your body’s pH too. Your body reacts to brass when it is too acidic, like when you are overtired or drinking too much coffee.

I had to learn all this about brass when I switched over. I had to learn this because people would ask me, ‘Why is my brass turning color?’ And I would say, let me figure that out!

I try to have fun with it, and make things I want to wear. I am not a sales person, but I feel like if I believe in it I can recommend it to people.

images from the brand

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Horst Rechelbacher, Austrian-born founder of Aveda Corps., one of the first mainstream companies to eliminate toxic chemicals in products, and enthusiastic-pioneer of mass market plant based beauty, sadly passed away last month at the age of 72. But he left behind a legacy of healthier communities.

Throughout his work and career Horst Rechelbacher shed light on the dangers of toxic chemicals in cosmetics long before the conversation was mainstream. Most importantly, not only was he an outspoken advocate on the issue, he offered solid solutions.

Founder of beauty care companies Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients, author, ayurvedic scholar and organic farmer, Rechelbacher grew revolutionary companies supplying high performing products and a keen awareness to the vital importance of natural beauty.

He would famously drink hair spray and other products made by his company to prove they weren’t simply giving lip service. “Everything we put in and on our bodies must be nutritious and safe,” was Rechelbacher’s signature motto.

Our skin, like a sponge, absorbs mostly anything we put on it; yet cosmetic ingredients are not regulated the same way food is. In the last decade, studies linking cosmetic ingredients to cancer have uncovered the importance of Rechelbacher’s pioneering work. But long before the conversation was mainstream, he was formalizing the best, toxic-free products through Aveda, and later Intelligent Nutrients; safe alternatives in form that didn’t sacrifice function.

Through his companies and tireless advocacy work, Mr. Rachelbacher revolutionized the beauty industry forever.

Mr. Rechelbacher’s plant-based approached stemmed from his mother, an herbablist. At the age of 14, he apprenticed at a nearby hair salon; only three years later to find himself working in Rome. He went on to found Aveda in 1978, fusing plant science and beauty against the modern ideas of efficiency through chemicals.

Thanks to Rechelbacher’s dedication Aveda is the first beauty company to produce with one hundred percent wind power, and the first beauty company to use one hundred percent post-consumer recycled PET packaging.

After selling Aveda in 1997, Rechelbacher founded Intelligent Nutrients, a beauty company using only certified organic ingredients. Most of the ingredients used are grown on his 570-acre organic farm in Osceola, Wisconsin.

Horst left us with fundamental ideas of the power of nature. Below are three revolutionary shifts he brought into the beauty industry forever.

1. The Relationship between Plants and Beauty is Luxury

Horst launched his career at a time when laboratory science was the shining horizon of global industries; food, beauty and others were looking for leaps in efficiency via chemicals as the answer to limits of nature. But Horst held on to the intrinsic benefits plants have to offer, and believed in beauty from the inside and out. His luxurious products free of toxic chemicals offer an alternative to the mainstream, proving you didn’t have to sacrifice form for function.

2. Companies are Greater Than Their Final Product

Rechelbacher’s work went far beyond his products. As an outspoken advocate for eliminating toxic chemicals in beauty, Horst helped finance the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Today, the organization stands as one of the largest and most influential groups working towards regulating the cosmetic industry and increasing consumer awareness. Their most recent work persuaded Johnson & Johnson to remove two ingredients from their baby shampoo that are linked to cancer.

He also conducted his business as a holistic vision of health: He led Aveda to be the first beauty company to produce with one hundred percent wind power, and the first beauty company to use one hundred percent post-consumer recycled PET packaging. Intelligent Nutrients offers an ingestible product called Intellimune, made of five powerful seed oils: black cumin, pumpkin, red grape, raspberry and cranberry. His companies didn’t just make healthier products, but healthier and more holistic consumer world.

3. Natural is Not Only Good for Our Health, It’s Good For Business

In 1997, Aveda Corps. was sold to Estee Lauder for a reported $300 million, and is still carried in over 25,000 stores and salons worldwide. Now that’s good business.

To leave something behind, greater than ourselves, is a life well lived. Horst Rechelbacher founded and matured healthy companies that have touched millions of people. As the father of safer cosmetics, his legacy will live on; inside and out.

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image: Social Earth

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ColumnNormcore has gone viral. But wait, what exactly is it?!

Trending hashtags and viral articles have birthed talk of a new style: “Normcore.” Normcore, defined as “approachable fashion,” is sprouting in the streets of SoHo and toting Seinfeld and Louis CK as style icons. The exploding conversation around bland, detail-free clothing — normal to the core — has piqued people’s attention. So what exactly is normcore trying to say?

“Normcore is a desire to be blank,” says Sean Monahan, member of K-Hole, trend forecasters who coined the phrase. “The New York version of being born an individual and wanting to find a community.”

Seem deep for a fashion trend? It is. Beyond the often cited light washed jeans and athletic sneakers is a desire to reachable. Dressing normcore subtly shouts the message we aren’t so different from one another, and maybe that is a good thing.

Rather than stand out, normcore wants to fit in and strip preconceived notions of status. At one time it was cool to be different. Now, as compassion seeps into our culture at large, interacting with lots of different people is on trend. And it should be. We all share this experience called life, and if at one time separating yourself from your neighbor was the thing, now it is cool to be void of surface difference. Amen to that.

Historically, fashion is elitist and marked social rank. Normcore strips this behavior.

As art movements bounce 180 degrees in reaction to what is a la moda, normcore is this same principle in action: a reaction to hipster-ism. Hipsters wanted to create a clear identity via their particular style — flannels, neatly rolled up pant hems and large beards — but arguably they ended up looking all the same. A hipster isn’t hard to spot in a crowd. So normcore is the opposite; if hipsters stick out, normcore camouflages — a blank slate negating details or notes of status.

Clothing, our second skin, allows us to express our identify and signal what we care about and who we are at first glance, which is often all we get. Baggy jeans or Louis Vuitton suitcases can inject, or reject, us into groups. Normcore is a ‘hello, let’s talk.’

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image: Normcore_Fashion

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Jewelry designer, Susan Domelsmith of Dirty Librarian Chains crafts handmade jewelry and elegant accessories out of second market materials from past jewelry factories on the eastern seaboard. Materials dating back to as early as the sixties have found new ways to shine through in Susan’s collections. EcoSalon caught up with Susan to discover more about her craft, upcycling process and made in NYC appeal.

Juliette Donatelli: Your line is produced in New York City?

Susan Domelsmith: Yes, by me.

JD: Do you do all the labor yourself?

SD: Yeah pretty much. I have a few assistants that come in and I teach them as well. It’s like continuing the manufacturing process and trying to keep it here.

But I also work with materials that were primarily made in the United States. I shop at factories that have shut down in Providence Rhode Island, and components from the sixties to the eighties. Second market

JD: Are all of those factories closed down now?

SD: A lot of the production has moved overseas since primarily the mass market stuff is made in China now. But I feel like there is a resurgence where people are starting to care more where their products are made and who makes them. So I feel like there are some new ones that are opening back up.

JD: When bring your handmade jewelry to a buyer or the larger public, and they find out it is made in NYC, is that an appeal to them?

SD: Yes definitely. I do a lot of markets where I am selling straight to the customer and they definitely love meeting the maker and knowing there is a nice person who made the jewelry, infusing it with good energy, rather than someone being forced into this kind of way to make a living. Which you know, some people still have to do in other parts of the world.

If they can identify with the way of life of the maker then I think that’s nice for the customer.

JD: Are more jewelers using reclaimed materials?

SD: Yes. When I first started — I’ve had my line for almost ten years — so when I first started I saw that was not really something people were doing. But it has definitely become more of a common way of designing and producing jewelry. I am really happy a lot more people are taking the more environmentally conscious route, because then it takes all the chemicals that are involved in plating and the mining of the materials as well — it takes that out of the equation, and it is still nice things that are beautiful to wear. So I am happy that that’s becoming more of a movement.

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images from the brand

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Ecosalon’s favorite inspirational quotes on spring.

1. I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.  -Ruth Stout

2. The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring. -Burl Ives

3. The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also. -Harriet Ann Jacobs

4. Each flower is a soul blossoming out to nature. –Gerard de Nerval

5. Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. -Doug Larson

6. She turned to the sunlight

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor:

“Winter is dead.” -A.A. Milne

7. All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar. – Helen Hayes

8. And forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran

9. You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.  -Pablo Neruda

10. Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. – Ellis Peters

11. If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

12. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. -Nadine Stair

13. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. –Anne Bradstreet

14. One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the spring. -Aldo Leopold

15. I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. -Langston Hughes

16. Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”  -Robin Williams

17. Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. –Robert H. Schuller

18. It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. –Rainer Maria Rilke

19. Spring is God’s way of saying, ‘One more time!’ -Robert Orben

20. Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world. –Virgil Kraft

21. Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day. -W. Earl Hall

22. When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.-Bishop Reginald Heber

23. Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring? -Neltje Blanchan

24. Spring is the time of plans and projects. -Leo Tolstoy

25. All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. –Indian Proverb

26. Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. -Yoko Ono

27. April is a promise that May is bound to keep.  -Hal Borland

28. Florals? For Spring? Groundbreaking. -Miranda Priestly in Devil Wears Prada

29. Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring. -William Alexander

30. If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having any spring. –Victor Hugo

31. I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can’t be done in one picture. -David Hockney

32. An optimist is the human personification of spring. – Susan J. Bissonette

33. In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.  -Margaret Atwood

34. April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. -William Shakespeare

35. The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. -Ernest Hemingway

36. Sweet springtime is my time is your time is our time for springtime is love time and viva sweet love. – e.e. cummings

37. Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.  -Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

38. Nature’s first green is gold. -Robert Frost

39. No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow -Proverb

Want More Quotes in Ecosalon? See Also:

37 Inspirational Quotes on Creativity

31 Motivational Quotes on Success

25 Inspirational Quotes on the Power of Women

30 Famous Quotes About Change

images: JapanDave, Juliette Donatelli, Mukumbura, Juliette Donatelli, Juliette Donatelli

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