To study a single speck of dust is to study the whole universe

Dogen, 1200 –  1253

And he also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me as round as a ball. I gazed at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’ The answer came thus, ‘It is everything that is made.’ I marveled how this could be, for it was so small it seemed it might fall suddenly into nothingness. Then I heard the answer, ‘It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. All things have their being in this way.’

Julian of Norwich, 1342 – 1416,  Revelations of Divine Love

photo US National Archives and Records Administration: Records of the Environmental Protection Agency